
uersttie Eiterature Btxit% 

EXTRA KUMBER X 

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POEMS FOR THE STUDY 
OF LANGUAGE 

PRESCRIBED IN THE COURSE OP STUDT 

FOB THE COMMON SCHOOLS 

OF ILLINOIS 



Hougtjtott, ittitam Si Company 



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Ibvtng: ] 
Bryant ; 

Watei 
Franklk 

manac 

Rev. ] 

Webb 
Holmes : 

of Bu 

Chaml 
Hawthoi 

Face ; 
Whittie] 

Ship-Builders ; TJie^TrorsIilp of JNature. 
Thoreau : Biographical Sketch ; Wild Apples. 
O'Reilly* Biographical Sketch; The Pilgrim Fa- 
thers. 
Lowell : Biographical Sketch ; Books and Libraries ; 

Essay on Lincoln [with Lincoln's Gettysburg 

Speech] ; The Vision of Sir Launfal. 
Emerson: Biographical Sketch; Behavior; Boston 

Hymn. 
Webster: Biographical Sketch; Address delivered 

at the Laying of the Corner-Stone of Bunker HilJ 

Monument, June 17, 1825. 
Everett: Biographical Sketch; From "The Char 

acter of Washington." 
Longfellow : Biographical Sketch ; Evangeline. 
?0E: Biographical Sketch; The Raven; The Fall 
of the House of Usher. 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY. 



Supervising Editor, Horace E. Scudder, 1886-1901 

Each regular single number ^ paper ^ ij cents All prices net postpaid, 

1. Longfellow's Evangeline. *ti 

2. Longfellow's Courtship of Miles Standish ; Elizabeth.* 

3. Longfellow's Courtship of Miles Standish. Dramatized. 

4. Whittier's Snow-Bound, and Other Poems.*tt** 

5. Whittier's Mabel Martin, and Other Poems.** 

6. Holmes's Grandmother's Story of Bimker Hill Battle, etc.* *♦ 

7. 8, 9. Hawthorne's Grandfathers Chair. In three parts.JJ 

10. Hawthorne's Biographical Stories. With Questions.* ** 

11. Longfellow's Children's Hour, and Other Poems.** 

12. Studies in Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes, and Lowell. 
13, 14. Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha. In two parts.J 

15. Lowell's Under the Old Elm, and Other Poems ** 

16. Bayard Taylor's Lars : a Pastoral ol Norway ; and Other Poems.* 

17. 18. Hawthorne's 'Wonder-Book. In two parts.J 

19, 20. Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography. In two parts.J 

21. Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richards Almanac, etc. 

22, 23. Hawthorne's Tanglewood Tales. In two parts.J 

24. Washington's Rules of Conduct, Letters, and Addresses.* 

25, 26. Longfellow's Golden Legend. In two parts.J 

27. Thoreau's Succession of Forest Trees, Wild Apples, and Sounds. 

With a Biographical Sketch by R. W. Emerson. J J 

28. John Burroughs's Birds and Bees.**$$ 

29. Hawthorne's Little Daffydowndilly, and Other Stories.* ** 

30. Lowell's Vision of Sir Launfal, and Other Poems.* tt** 

}i. Holmes's My Hunt after the Captain, and Other Papers.** 

32. Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Speech, etc.** 

33, 34. 35' Longfellow's Tales of a Wayside Lin. In three p<^rts.Jt 

36. John Burroughs's Sharp Eyes, and Other Papers.** 

37. Charles Dudley Warner's A-Hunting of the Deer, etc.*tJ 

38. Longfellow's Building of the Ship, and Other Poems. 

39. Lowell's Books and Libraries, and Other Papers.** 

40. Hawthorne's Tales of the White Hills, and Sketches.** 

41. Whittier's Tent on the Beach, and Associated Poems. 

42. Emerson's Fortune of the Republic. The American Scholar, etc.** 

43. Ulysses among the Phaeacians. From Bryant's Translation of Homer's 

Odyssey.* 

44. Edge worth's Waste Not, Want Not ; and The Barring Out. 

45. Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome.* 

46. Old Testament Stories in Scripture Language. 

47. 48. Fables and Folk Stories. In two parts.* 
49, 50. Hans Andersen's Stories. In two parts, t 

51, 52. Washington Lrv^ing : Essays from the Sketch Book. [51] Rip Van 
Winkle, etc. [52] The Voyage, etc. In two parts.* 

53. Scott's Lady of the Lake. Rolfe. {Double Number, 30 cents. Also, in 

Rol/e''s Students'' Series, cloth, to Teachers, 53 cents.) 

54. Bryant's Sella, Thanatopsis, and Other Poems.* 

55. Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice. Thurber.* ** 

56. Webster's Bunker Hill Monument; Adams and Jefferson.* 

57. Dickens's Christmas Carol.** 

58. Dickens's Cricket on the Hearth.** 

59. Verse and Prose for Beginners in Reading.* 

60,61. The Sir Roger de Coverley Papers. In two parts.* 

62. John Fiske's War of Lidependence.§ 

63. Longfellow's Paul Revere's Ride, and Other Poems.** 

64. 6s, 66. Lambs' Tales from Shakespeare. In three parts.** 

67. Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.* ** 

68. Goldsmith's Deserted Village, the Traveller, and Other Poems.* 
6g. Hawthorne's Old Manse, and a Few Mosses.** 

70. A Selection from Whittier's Child Life in Poetry.** 

71. A Selection from Whittier's Child Life in Prose.** 

72. Milton's L' Allegro, II Penseroso, Comus, Lycidas, and Sonnets.* *• 

73. Tennyson's Enoch Arden, and Other Poems.* 

For explanation 0/ signs see end of list. 



POEMS FOR THE STUDY 
OF LANGUAGE 

PRESCRIBED IN THE COURSE OF STUDY 

FOR THE COMMON SCHOOLS 

OF ILLINOIS 



WITH BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
AND ILLUSTRATIONS 



WITH SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

BY 



CHESTINE GOWDY 

TEACHER OF GRAMMAR IN THE ILLINOIS 
STATE NORMAL UNIVERSITY 




HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

Boston : 4 Park Street ; New York : 85 Fifth Avenue 
Chicago : 378-388 Wabash Avenue 



T'R o'' 



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LIBRARY of OONGRrlSS 

FEB 11 1905 

Oopyriinit cjiiry 

^^.//, ^9 OS' 
CUiSS t3^ XXc. Noi 

COPY B 




OFFICIAL ENDORSEMENT 

The publication of this book was approved and endorsed 
by the Standing Committee on the Illinois State Course of 
Study at a sjDecial meeting held during the convention of the 
Illinois State Teachers' Association at Springfield, Illinois, 
December 27-29, 1904. 



COPYRIGHT 1905 BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 




The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company. 



PUBLISHERS' NOTE 

In 1889 a Course of Study for the State of Illinois con- 
sisting of eight years' work was compiled by a committee 
of six county superintendents appointed by a convention of 
county superintendents and other leading educators of the 
State who had been called together for this purpose by 
the State Superintendent of Public Instruction. 

This course ^ has since been revised three times ; the last 
revision was made in August, 1903, by the Standing Com- 
mittee of the County Superintendents' Section of the State 
Teachers Association, composed of Alfred Bayliss, State 
Superintendent of Public Instruction ; George R. Shawhan, 
Ex-County Superintendent of Champaign County; U. J. 
Hoffman, County Superintendent of La Salle County ; Joseph 
M. Piper, Ex-County Superintendent of Ogle County ; James 
Kirk, Professor of Pedagogy in the Southern Illinois Nor- 
mal University ; John W. Cook, President of the Northern 
Illinois State Normal School ; David Felmley, President 
of the Illinois State Normal University ; C. L. Gregory, 
County Superintendent of Mercer County ; L. C. Lord, 
President of the Eastern Illinois State Normal School ; 
R. T. Morgan, County Superintendent of Du Page County ; 
Mrs. Hester M. Smith, County Superintendent of Pulaski 
County. 

Under the supervision of this committee the work in 
language was revised by Miss Chestine Gowdy, assisted 
in the work of the third and fourth years by Miss Lora 
Dexheimer. This language course calls for the study of 
a large number of poems. Many of these poems were 
difficult to find, while others were published only in ex- 
1 Published by C. M. Parker, Taylorville, 111., price 25 cents. 



iv PUBLISHERS' NOTE 

pensive editions. A demand, therefore, arose for a book 
which should contain all of the poems recommended, and 
the collection of this material into this volume was under- 
taken by Houghton, Mifflin & Co., as they are the authorized 
publishers of more than half of the poems recommended. 
In this they were assisted by other publishers and by authors 
who kindly granted permission for the use of poems controlled 
by them. 

Acknowledgment is due to Charles Scribner's Sons for the 
use of The Ruhy-Crowned Kinglet, taken from The Toil- 
ing of Felix and Other Poeins, by Henry van Dyke, and 
for Nightfall in Dordrecht, taken from Second Book of 
Verse, by Eugene Field ; to Little, Brown and Company for 
October's Bright Blue Weather, Down to Sleep, and Sep- 
tember, by Helen Hunt Jackson ; to J. B. Lippincott Com- 
pany for Sheridan's Ride, by Thomas Buchanan Read ; 
to E. P. Dutton and Company for Christmas Everywhere, 
by Phillips Brooks ; to Fleming H. Revell Company for Our 
Flag, taken from Lyrics of Love, by Margaret Sangster ; to 
Lothrop, Lee and Shepard Company, and to the author for 
Christmas Tide, by Richard Burton. 

Thanks are also due to the following authors for courteous 
permission to use the poems mentioned : to Mrs. Lydia 
Avery Coonley Ward for Why do Bells for Christinas 
Ring ; to Eben E. Rexf ord for The Bluebij^d. 

The value of this book has been greatly enhanced by an 
introduction by Miss Gowdy, who, as author of the course, 
is especially qualified to offer suggestions for the study of 
the recommended poems. The biography of Lowell was 
also written by Miss Gowdy. It is to be hoped that this 
book will prove useful to many teachers not only in Illinois 
but also in other States where the course is followed. 



SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

Literature in a Language Course. 

Language work in our elementary schools should deal 
chiefly with the art of speech. Only when pupils have 
reached the last years of their common-school course are they 
ready for any study of the science of language. But long 
before this time they should begin to acquire power in self- 
expression. Such language training should be provided as 
will tend to give some measure of clearness, freedonj, and 
virility, as well as formal correctness of speech. 

The outline for language work in the Illinois State Course 
of Study was prepared in the belief that wealth of thought 
and power in expression must develop together. In the 
series of composition exercises suggested in the course of 
study, the natural interests of the child are recognized, — 
the interests that grow out of his home life, the life of the 
community, and the character of the surrounding country. 
To write acceptably he must write about subjects of which 
he has knowledge. But any series of language lessons that 
does not tend to make his own life and the world of which 
he is a part more interesting to him, more full of things to 
write about and talk about, is likely to fail of large language 
results. To help broaden and deepen the interests of the 
pupils, as well as to provide high ideals of expression, one 
or two poems for study are named each month in addition to 
the composition exercises and the more formal work of the 
course. Nearly a hundred poems are included in the six 
years' work outlined. They are all brought together for the 
first time in this volume. 



VI SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

Poems to be Studied Primarily as Literature. 

The wise teacher will ask about each poem first of all, 
how it may be made to give jDleasure and awaken thought. 
She will see in it a piece of literature, not merely material 
for a language lesson. The chief aim in teaching a descrip- 
tive poem should be to make the pictures in the poem more 
vivid, and thus to awaken the imagination or to kindle an 
appreciation of kindred beauties in the pupil's immediate 
environment. In teaching a narrative poem the sequence 
of events must first be made clear. After that is accom- 
plished, the aim should be to give fuller meaning to the 
story by bringing out clearly the causes, motives, and results 
of acts. 

The younger pupils will enjoy the poems without any 
thought of why they like them, but unconsciously their 
thought and speech will be moulded by the study. In the 
higher classes effective expressions and passages should be 
pointed out, and the means of producing effects should 
be noted. 

Language Values in the "Work. 

But while the poems are to be studied primarily as lit- 
erature, the teacher should be keenly conscious of the 
possibilities for language training connected with the 
work. 

The study of literature more than any other subject de- 
mands leisurely work, time for thought to ripen and to find 
fitting expression. The true literature class is a conversa- 
tion class, — a class in which each pupil is led to interpret 
the author, and to express his own thoughts without self- 
consciousness. It is of necessity a class in the art of ex- 
pression. 

Studying and memorizing the poems must enlarge the 
reading vocabularies of the pupils. The teacher should see 
that the work is made to enrich their writing and their 
speaking vocabularies as well. Children are too often satis- 
fied with a slender list of words representing very general 



SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY vii 

ideas. One word is made to serve for a variety of special 
uses, the hearer being trusted to interpret it according to 
the circumstances under which it is used. In the talk about 
the poem the teacher should use the new and more definite 
words of the poet, thus leading his pupils to do the same. 
Professor George Herbert Palmer says, " Let any one who 
wants to see himself grow, resolve to adopt two new words 
each week. It will not be long before the endless and en- 
chanting variety of the world will begin to reflect itself in 
his speech and in his mind as well." Does not this suggest 
an ideal which every language teacher should have for his 
pupils, and which he should strive to impart to them before 
their school lives end ? 

A few special word exercises may be suggested : 

1. Make a list of descriptive words in the poem. What 
does each describe ? Use it to describe something else. 

2. Make a list of words that you never use. What word 
should you have used in the place of each if you had tried 
to express its meaning? Which word is better, yours or the 
author's ? Why ? 

3. Give as many synonyms as you can for the following- 
words (these to be selected by the teacher from the poem). 
Did the author make a good choice in each case ? 

Relation of Study to Composition Exercises. 

Compositions should not often be based directly upon 
the poems. Pupils must be able to tell or write the story 
presented by a narrative poem, but no paraphrasing of de^ 
scriptive passages should be called for. The conversations 
of the class hour will, however, often suggest subjects for 
compositions ; and the general character of a poem studied 
in a given month has often determined the character of 
a composition suggested for the month. For example, a 
descriptive poem is often accompanied by a descriptive 
composition ; and a narrative poem by a narrative compo- 
sition. 



viii SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

Method of Presentation. 

With younger children every poem should be studied first 
in class. After a few words of introduction fitted to arouse 
the interest of the children or to remove any bar between 
them and the poet, the teacher should read the poem as well 
as she can, not stopping for comment unless it seem neces- 
sary to do so in order to hold the interest of the children. 
After this first reading, the poem should be read again part 
by part. This is the time for question, explanation, and 
discussion. If time permit, the teacher should now read 
the poem a third time, that the final impression may be left 
by the author's own words. The whole or a part of the 
poem should now be memorized. Cliildren will in this way 
learn with delight poems which they could not read by them- 
selves with understanding or pleasure. Miss Dexheimer 
has used with children in the first grade many of the poems 
named in the third and the fourth year work. 

With older pupils the amount of help given by the teacher 
should depend upon the character of the special poem to be 
studied. In the seventh month of the sixth year A Legend 
of the Northland and The Voice of Spiking are the poems 
named. The former is a simple narrative poem, involving 
no difficulties in meaning or phraseology. It may be studied 
from the book with no help from the teacher but a simple 
statement of the character of the preparation to be made. 
When class time comes, the pupils may be expected to tell the 
story clearly and to explain allusions. They may be trusted 
to see the moral with no help from the teacher. The last 
stanzas may well be ignored, as the incidental moral les- 
son is more effective with young people than the sermon. 
No poem should be memorized until it has been read in 
class. 

The Voice of Spring is a descriptive poem, dependent 
for its charm upon the music of the rhythm and its appro- 
priateness to the joyous progress described by the poem, and 
upon the pictures presented, many of which are unfamiliar 
to Illinois children. The teacher's success here depends 



SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY ix 

upon his own appreciation and enjoyment of the poem and 
his power to arouse these feelings in his pupils. This poem 
must be studied in class before the pupils are asked even to 
read it. 

Four Poets most Largely Represented. 

More than half of the poems named in the course were 
written by four men, Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell, and 
Bryant. There were two leading reasons for including so 
many poems by these authors. In the first place, it was 
thought that they would be more generally accessible than 
others, as school and home libraries would be likely to in- 
clude the works of these four writers. In the second place, 
it was thought that every American child should come to 
have, as a part of his rightful heritage, a sense of kinship 
with those poets who have done so much to gain European 
recognition for American literature and to develop a spirit 
of nationality at home. 

Special Study of Authors. 

Younger children should enjoy literature for its own sake, 
with little interest in the personality of the writer. The 
names of authors may be given them, but only gradually 
should pleasure in the work of an author arouse interest in 
the writer himself. But in the seventh and eighth years of 
the course, opportunities are suggested for giving special 
attention to the life and writings of each of the four poets 
whose names have become most familiar to the pupils. 

At the close of the sixth month of the year in which, by 
the system of alternation common in Illinois, classes may be 
expected to be doing third, fifth, and seventh year work, an 
afternoon may be given to Longfellow exercises with very 
little special preparation. All classes have been studying 
poems written by him ; these may be recited. The last com- 
positions of all classes are suitable for such an occasion and 
some of them should be read. An older pupil may be called 
upon to tell of the author's life. 



X SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

For the morning exercises of the eighth month of the 
same year, the eight poems of Lowell that have been learned 
during the year may be recited by different pupils, and 
others may be asked to tell the school about the author's life 
and character. 

An examination of the course will suggest that the fifth 
month of the alternate year is a suitable time for a special 
study of Whittier, and that a joint Bryant and bird cele- 
bration may come during the eighth month of this year. 

Biographical sketches are included in this volume as 
helps in the study of the four authors named. Other mate- 
rial, such as pictures and magazine clippings, should be 
collected gradually, and each school library should contain 
one complete Qopy of each author's poems. 

Chestixe Gowdy. 



CONTENTS 



THIRD YEAR 

First Month page 

Robert of Lincoln William Cullen Bryant 1 
Nightfall in Dordrecht Eugene Field 3 

Second Month 

The Corn-Song John Greenleaf Wliittier 5 

The Kitten and Falling Leaves (Selection) 

William Wordsworth 7 



Third Month 






A Thanksgiving Song 


Selected 


8 


Down to Sleep 


Helen Hunt Jackson 


9 



Fourth Month 

Why do Bells for Christmas Ring 

Lydia A. Coonley Ward 10 
PiccOLA Celia Thaxter 11 

Fifth Month 

Nobility Alice Cary 12 

Our Flag Margaret Sangster 14 

Sixth Month 

The Children's Hour 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 14 
Hiawatha's Childhood (Selection) 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 16 



xii CONTENTS 



Seventh Month 




The Planting of the Apple-Tree 




William CuUen Bryant 


19 


Hiawatha's Sailing (Selection) 




Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 


22 


Eighth Month 




The Brook Alfred, Lord Tennyson 


26 


Spring Celia Thaxter 


28 



FOURTH YEAR 

First Month 

September Helen Hunt Jackson 30 

The Leap of Roushan Beg 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 31 
Second Month 

October's Bright Blue Weather 

Helen Hunt Jackson 34 
The Pumpkin John Greenleaf Whittier 35 

Third Month 

The Village Blacksmith 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 37 
The Mountain and the Squirrel (The 

Fable) Ralph Waldo Emerson 39 

Fourth Month 

The Sparrows Celia Thaxter 40 

Fifth Month 

Paul Revere's Ride 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 42 
Snow-Bound (Selections : — The Storm ; The 
Kitchen Scene) John Greenleaf Whittier 47 



CONTENTS xiii 

Sixth Month 

The Emperor's Bird's-Nest 

Henry Wadswortli Longfellow 50 

Our Heroes Phoebe Gary 53 

Seventh Month 

Written in March William Wordsworth 54 

Sun and Shadow Oliver Wendell Holmes 54 

Eighth Month 

The Sandpiper Celia Thaxter 55 

The Bluebird Eben Eugene Rexford 57 

Song — The Owl Alfred, Lord Tennyson 58 



FIFTH YEAR 

First Month 

Barbara Frietohie John Greenleaf Whittier 59 
An Order for a Picture Alice Gary 62 

Second Month 

The Fountain James Russell Lowell ^^ 

Sheridan's Ride Thomas Buchanan Read 67 

Third Month 

The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers in 

New England Felicia D. Hemaiis 69 

The Hundredth Psalm The Bible 71 

Fourth Month 

Ghristmas Bells 

Henry Wads worth Longfellow 71 
Little Gottlieb Phoebe Gary 73 

Fifth Month 

The Heritage James Russell Lowell 77 

Abraham Lincoln William Gullen Bryant 79 



XIV CONTENTS 

Sixth Month 

The Arrow and the Song 

Henry Wads worth Longfellow 80 
The Builders Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 80 

Seventh Month 

Plant a Tree Lucy Larcom 82 

Spring Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 83 

Eighth Month 

The Daffodils William Wordsworth 84 

June (from The Vision of Sir Launfal) 

James Russell Lowell 85 



SIXTH YEAR 

First Month 

The Gray Swan Alice Gary 88 

Rain in Summer 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 90 
Second Month 

The Harvest Moon 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 93 
Maize, the Nation's Emblem Gelia Thaxter 94 

Third Month 

The Leak in the Dike Phcebe Gary 96 

The Frost Spirit John Greenleaf Whittier 101 

Fourth Month 

Ghristmas Everywhere Phillips Brooks 103 

Christmas Tide Richard Burton 103 

Christmas (In Memoriam, CVI) 

Alfred, Lord Tennyson 104 
Fifth Month 

King Solomon and the Ants 

Jolin Greenleaf Whittier 105 



CONTENTS XV 

Snow-Bound (Selections : — The Mother ; 
The Sister ; The Schoolmaster) 

John Greenleaf Whittier 107 
Conductor Bradley John Greenleaf Whittier 111 

Sixth Month 

Concord Hymn Ralph Waldo Emerson 113 

The Flower of Liberty 

Oliver Wendell Holmes 114 

Song of Marion's Men 

WilHam Cullen Bryant 115 
Seventh Month 

The Voice of Spring Felicia D. Hemans 117 

A Legend of the Northland Phoebe Gary 120 
The Legend of the Crossbill 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 123 
Eighth Month 

To A Waterfowl William Cullen Bryant 124 

The Ruby-Crowned Kinglet 

Henry van Dyke 126 

SEVENTH YEAR 

First Month 

YussouF James Russell Lowell 130 

Second Month 

The Shepherd of King Admetus 

James Russell Lowell 131 
Third Month 

The Huskers John Greenleaf Whittier 133 

Fourth Month 

The Gift of Tritemius 

John Greenleaf Whittier 136 
Fifth Month 

Ode Recited at the Harvard Commemora- 
tion James Russell Lowell 138 



xvi CONTENTS 

Sixth Month 

Selections from Longfellow's Poems, Re- 
ferring TO HIS Cambridge Home : — Chil- 
dren, The Old Clock on the Stairs, The 
Herons of Elmwood, The Two Angels, 
To THE River Charles 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 153 

Sei^enth Month 

Rhcecus James Russell Lowell 161^ 

Eighth Month 

To THE Dandelion James Russell Lowell 167 



EIGHTH YEAR 

First Month 

Abraham Davenport 

John Greenleaf Whittier 170 

Second Month 

For an Autumn Festival 

John Greenleaf Whittier 172 

Third Month 

The Chambered Nautilus 

Oliver Wendell Holmes 174 

Fourth Month 

The Legend Beautiful 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 176 

Fifth Month 

IcHABOD John Greenleaf Whittier 180 

Sixth Month 

" Mother of a Mighty Race " 

William Cullen Bryant 182 



CONTENTS xvii 

Seventh Month 

The Oak James Russell Lowell 184 

Eighth 3Ionth 

The Return of the Birds 

William Culleu Bryant 186 

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 189 

John Greenleaf Whittier 193 

James Russell Lowell 196 

William Cullen Bryant 201 

INDEX OF AUTHORS 205 

INDEX OF TITLES 209 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

Whittier's Birthplace in Winter ... 46 

Kitchen in the Whittier Homestead . . 50 

Elmwood, Cambridge ...... 84 

Craigie House, Cambridge .... 152 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow . . . .190 

John Greenleaf Whittier .... 194 

James Russell Lowell ..... 196 

William Cullen Bryant .... 202 



POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF 
LANGUAGE 



THIRD YEAR 

ROBERT OF LINCOLN 

William Cullen Bkyant 

Merrily swinging on brier and weed, 

Near to the nest of his little dame, 
Over the mountain-side or mead, 

Robert of Lincoln is telling his name : 

Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, 5 

Spink, spank, spink; 
Snug and safe is that nest of ours. 
Hidden among the summer flowers. 
Chee, chee, chee. 

Robert of Lincoln is gayly drest, 10 

Wearing a bright black wedding-coat ; 
White are his shoulders and white his crest. 
Hear him call in his merry note : 
Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, 
Spink, spank, spink ; 15 

Look, what a nice new coat is mine. 
Sure there was never a bird so fine. 
Chee, chee, chee. 

Robert of Lincoln's Quaker wife. 

Pretty and quiet, with plain brown wings, 20 



POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

Passing at liome a patient life, 

Broods in the grass while her husband sings : 
Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, 
Spink, spank, spink ; 
Brood, kind creature ; you need not fear 25 

Thieves and robbers while I am here. 
Chee, chee, chee. 

Modest and shy as a nun is she ; 

One weak chirp is her only note. 
Braggart and prince of braggarts is he, 30 

Pouring boasts from his little throat : 
Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, 
Spink, spank, spink ; 
Never was I afraid of man ; 
Catch me, cowardly knaves, if you can ! 35 

Chee, chee, chee. 

Six white eggs on a bed of hay, 

Flecked with purple, a pretty sight ! 
There as the mother sits all day, 

Robert is singing with all his might ; 40 

Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, 
Spink, spank, spink ; 
Nice good wife, that never goes out. 
Keeping house while I frolic about. 

Chee, chee, chee. 45 

Soon as the little ones chip the shell. 

Six wide mouths are open for food ; 
Robert of Lincoln bestirs him well. 
Gathering seeds for the hungry brood. 

Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, 50 

Spink, spank, spink ; 



ILLINOIS COURSE — THIRD YEAR 3 

This new life is likely to be 
Hard for a gay young feUow like me. 
Chee, chee, chee. 

Robert of Lincoln at length is made 55 

Sober with work, and silent with care ; 
OfP is his holiday garment laid, 
Half forgotten that merry air : 
Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, 
Spink, spank, spink ; fiO 

Nobody knows but my mate and I 
Where our nest and our nestlings lie. 
Chee, chee, chee. 

Summer wanes ; the children are gTOwn ; 

Fun and frolic no more he knows ; 65 

Robert of Lincoln 's a humdrum crone ; 
Off he flies, and we sing as he goes : 
Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, 
Spink, spank, spink ; 
When you can pipe that merry old strain, 70 
Robert of Lincoln, come back again. 
Chee, chee, chee. 



NIGHTFALL IN DORDRECHT 

Eugene Field 

The miU goes toiling slowly around 
With steady and solemn creak. 

And my little one hears in the kindly sound 
The voice of the old mill speak. 



POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

While round and round those big white wings 5 

Grinily and ghostlike creep, 
My little one hears that the old mill sings 

" Sleep, little tulip, sleep ! " 

The sails are reefed and the nets are drawn, 

And, over his pot of beer, 10 

The fisher, against the morrow's dawn. 

Lustily maketh cheer. 
He mocks at the winds that caper along 

From the far-off clamorous deep, — 
But we — we love their lullaby song 15 

Of " Sleep, little tulip, sleep ! " 

Old dog Fritz in slumber sound 

Groans of the stony mart : 
To-morrow how proudly he '11 trot you round. 

Hitched to our new milk-cart ! 20 

And you shall help me blanket the kine 

And fold the gentle sheep. 
And set the herring a-soak in brine, — 

But now, little tulip, sleep ! 

A Dream-One conies to button the eyes 25 

That wearily droop and blink. 
While the old mill buffets the frowning skies 

And scolds at the stars that wink ; 
Over your face the misty wings 

Of that beautiful Dream-One sweep, 30 

And rocking your cradle she softly sings, 

" Sleep, little tulip, sleep ! " 



ILLINOIS COURSE— THIRD YEAR 5 

THE CORN-SONG 

John Gkbenleaf Whittier 

Heap high the farmer's wintry hoard ! 

High heap the golden corn ! 
No richer gift has Autumn poured 

From out her lavish horn ! 

Let other lands, exulting, glean 5 

The apple from the pine, 
The orange from its glossy green, 

The cluster from the vine ; 

We better love the hardy gift 

Our rugged vales bestow, 10 

To cheer us when the storm shall drift 

Our harvest-fields with snow. 

Through vales of grass and meads of flowers 

Our ploughs their furrows made, 
While on the hills the sun and showers 15 

Of changeful April played. 

We dropped the seed o'er hill and plain 

Beneath the sun of May, 
And frightened from our sprouting grain 

The robber crows away. 20 

All through the long, bright days of June 

Its leaves grew green and fair. 
And waved in hot midsummer's noon 

Its soft and yellow hair. 



POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

And now, with Autumn's moonlit eves, 25 

Its harvest-time has come, 
We pluck away the frosted leaves. 

And bear the treasure home. 

There, when the snows about us drift, 

And winter winds are cold, 30 

Fair hands the broken grain shall sift. 
And knead its meal of gold. 

Let vapid idlers loll in silk 

Around their costly board ; 
Give us the bowl of samp and milk, 35 

By homespun beauty poured ! 

Where'er the wide old kitchen hearth 

Sends up its smoky curls. 
Who will not thank the kindly earth, 

And bless our farmer girls ! 40 

Then shame on all the proud and vain, . 

Whose folly laughs to scorn 
The blessing of our hardy grain, 

Our wealth of golden corn ! 

Let earth withhold her goodly root, 45 

Let mildew blight the rye. 
Give to the worm the orchard's fruit, 

The wheat-field to the fly : 

But let the good old crop adorn 

The hills our fathers trod ; 50 

Still let us, for His golden corn. 

Send up our thanks to God ! 



ILLINOIS COURSE— THIRD YEAR 



SELECTION FROM THE KITTEN AND 
FALLING LEAVES 

William Wordsworth 

That way look, my Infant, lo ! 

What a pretty baby-sliow I 

See the Kitten on the waU, 

Sporting with the leaves that fall. 

Withered leaves — one — two — and three — 5 

From the lofty elder-tree ! 

Through the calm and frosty air 

Of this morning bright and fair, 

Eddying round and round they sink 

Softly, slowly : one might think, 10 

From the motions that are made. 

Every little leaf conveyed 

Sylph or Faery hither tending, — 

To this lower world descending, 

Each invisible and mute, 15 

In his wavering parachute. 

— But the Kitten, how she starts. 

Crouches, stretches, paws, and darts ! 

First at one, and then its fellow 

Just as light and just as yellow ; 20 

There are many now — now one — 

Now they stop and there are none. 

What intenseness of desire 

In her upward eye of fire ! 

With a tiger-leap half-way 25 

Now she meets the coming prey. 

Lets it go as fast, and then 



8 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

Has it in her power again : 

Now she works with three or foui*, 

Like an Indian conjurer ; 30 

Quick as he in feats of art, 

Far beyond in joy of heart. 

Were her antics played in the eye 

Of a thousand standers-by, 

Clapping hands with shout and stare, 35 

What would little Tabby care 

For the plaudits of the crowd ? 

Over happy to be proud, 

Over wealthy in the treasure 

Of her own exceeding pleasure ! 40 



A THANKSGIVING SONG 

Selected 

For flowers that bloom about our feet, 

For tender grass so fresh, so sweet. 

For song of bird and huni of bee. 

For all things fair we hear or see. 

Our Father, we thank Thee. 5 

For blue of stream and blue of sky. 

For pleasant shade of branches high, 

For fragrant air and cooling breeze, 

For beauty of the blooming trees, 

Our Father, we thank Thee. 10 

For mother love and father care, 
For brothers strong and sisters fair. 



ILLINOIS COURSE— THIRD YEAR 9 

For love at school and home each day, 

For guidance lest we go astray, 

Our Father, we thank Thee. 15 

For Thy dear everlasting arms 

That bear us o'er all ills and harms. 

For blessed words of long ago, 

That help us now Thy will to know. 

Our Father, we thank Thee. 20 



DOWN TO SLEEP 

Helen Hunt Jackson 

November woods are bare and still ; 

November days are clear and bright ; 

Each noon burns up the morning's chill ; 

The morning's snow is gone by night ; 

Each day my steps grow slow, grow light, 5 

As through the woods I reverent creep. 

Watching all things lie " down to sleep." 

I never knew before what beds. 

Fragrant to smell, and soft to touch. 

The forest sifts and shapes and spreads ; 10 

I never knew before how much 

Of human sound there is in such 

Low tones as through the forest sweep 

When all wild things lie " down to sleep." 

Each day I find new coverlids 15 

Tucked in, and more sweet eyes shut tight ; 
Sometimes the viewless mother bids 



10 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

Her ferns kneel- down, full in my sight ; 

I hear their chorus of '' good-night ; " 

And half I smile, and half I weep, 20 

Listening while they lie " down to sleep." 

November woods are bare and still ; 
November days are bright and good ; 
Life's noon burns up life's morning chiU ; 
Life's night rests feet which long have stood ; 25 
Some warm, soft bed, in field or wood, 
The mother will not fail to keep, 
Where we can lay us " down to sleep." 



WHY DO BELLS FOR CHRISTMAS RING? 

Lydia a. Coonley Ward 

Why do bells for Christmas ring ? 
Why do little children sing? 

Once a lovely shining star, 
Seen by shepherds from afar. 
Gently moved until its light 5 

Made a manger cradle bright. 
There a darling baby lay. 
Pillowed soft upon the hay ; 
And its mother sang and smiled, 
" This is Christ, the holy Child." 10 

Therefore, bells for Christmas ring. 
Therefore, little children sing. 



ILLINOIS COURSE— THIRD YEAR 11 

PICCOLA 

Celia Thaxter 

Poor, sweet Piccola ! Did you hear 
What happened to Piccola, children dear ? 
'T is seldom Fortune such favor grants 
As fell to this little maid of France. 

'T was Christmas-time, and her parents poor 5 
Could hardly drive the wolf from the door, 
Striving with poverty's patient pain 
Only to live till summer again. 

No gifts for Piccola ! Sad were they 

When dawned the morning of Christmas-day ; 10 

Their little darling no joy might stir, 

St. Nicholas nothing would bring to her ! 

But Piccola never doubted at all 

That something beautiful must befall 

Every child upon Christmas-day, 15 

And so she slept till the dawn was gray. 

And full of faith, when at last she woke. 

She stole to her shoe as the morning broke ; 

Such sounds of gladness filled all the air, 

'T was plain St. Nicholas had been there ! 20 

In rushed Piccola sweet, half -wild : 
Never was seen such a joyful child. 
" See what the good saint brought ! " she cried, 
And mother and father must peep mside. 



12 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

Now such a story who ever heard ? 25 

There was a little shivermg bird ! 

A sparrow, that in at the window flev» , 

Had crept into Piccola's tiny shoe ! 

" How good poor Piccola must have been ! '' 
She cried, as happy as any queen, 30 

While the starving sparrow she fed and warmed, 
And danced with rapture, she was so charmed. 

Children, this story I tell to you, 

Of Piccola sweet and her bird, is true. 

In the far-off land of France, they say, 35 

Still do they live to this very day. 



NOBILITY 

Alice Gary 

True worth is in being ^ not seeming^ — 

In doing each day that goes by 
Some little good — not in the dreaming 

Of gTeat things to do by and by. 
For whatever men say in blindness, 5 

And spite of the fancies of j^outh, 
There 's nothing so kingly as kindness. 

And nothing so royal as truth. 

We get back our mete as we measure — 

We cannot do wrong and feel right, 10 

Nor can we give pain and gain pleasure, 
For justice avenges each slight. 



ILLINOIS COURSE— THIRD YEAR 13 

The air for the wing of the sparrow, 

The bush for the robin and wren, 
But alway the path that is narrow 15 

And straight, for the children of men. 

'T is not in the images of story 

The heart of its ills to beguile, 
Though he who makes courtship to glory 

Gives all that he hath for her smile. 20 

For when from her heights he has won her, 

Alas ! it is only to prove 
That nothing 's so sacred as honor, 

And nothing so loyal as love ! 

We cannot make bargains for blisses, 25 

Nor catch them like fishes in nets ; 
And sometimes the thing our life misses, 

Helps more than the thing which it gets. 
For good lieth not in pursuing. 

Nor gaining of great nor of small, 30 

But just in the doing, and doing 

As we would be done by, is all. 

Through envy, through malice, through hating, 

Against the world, early and late, 
No jot of our courage abating — 35 

Our part is to work and to wait. 
And slight is the sting of his trouble 

Whose winnings are less than his worth ; 
For he who is honest is noble. 

Whatever his fortunes or birth, 40 



14 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

OUR FLAG 
Margaket Sakgster 

Flag of the fearless-hearted, 

Flag of the broken chain, 
Flag in a day-dawn started, 

Never to pale or wane. 
Dearly we prize its colors, 

With the heaven light breaking through. 
The clustered stars and the steadfast bars. 

The red, the white, and the blue. 



Flag of the sturdy fathers. 

Flag of the royal sons, 10 

Beneath its folds it gathers 

Earth's best and noblest ones. 
Boldly we wave its colors, 

Our veins are thrilled anew 
By the steadfast bars, the clustered stars, 15 

The red, the white, and the blue. 



THE CHILDREN'S HOUR 
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 

Between the dark and the daylight. 
When the night is beginning to lower. 

Comes a pause in the day's occupations, 
That is known as the Children's Hour. 



ILLINOIS COURSE— THIRD YEAR 15 

I hear in the chamber above me 5 

The patter of little feet, 
The sound of a door that is opened, 

And voices soft and sweet. 

From my study I see in the lamplight. 

Descending the broad hall stair, 10 

Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra, 
And Edith with golden hair. 

A whisper, and then a silence : 
Yet I know by their merry eyes. 

They are plotting and planning together 15 
To take me by surprise. 

A sudden rush from the stairway, 

A sudden raid from the hall ! 
By three doors left unguarded, 

They enter my castle wall ! 20 

They climb up into my turret. 

O'er the arms and back of my chair ; 

If I try to escape, they surround me ; 
They seem to be everywhere. 

They almost devour me with kisses, 25 

Their arms about me entwine. 
Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen 

In his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine ! 

27-28. Near Bingen on the Rhine is a little square Mouse- 
Tower, so called from an old word meaning toll, since it was 
used as a toll-house ; but there is an old tradition that a certain 
Bishop Hatto, who had been cruel to the people, was attacked 
in the tower by a great army of rats and mice. See Southey's 
famous poem. Bishop Hatto. 



16 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

Do you think, O blue-eyed banditti, 

Because you have scaled the wall, 30 

Such an old moustache as I am 
Is not a match for you all ? 

I have you fast in my fortress, 

And will not let you depart. 
But put you down into the dungeon 35 

In the round-tower of my heart. 

And there will I keep you forever, 

Yes, forever and a day. 
Till the walls shall crumble to ruin. 

And moidder in dust away ! 40 



SELECTION FROM HIAWATHA'S CHILDHOOD 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 

By the shores of Gitche Gumee, 

By the shining Big-Sea- Water, 

Stood the wigwam of Nokomis, 

Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis. 

Dark behind it rose the forest, 5 

Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees. 

Rose the firs with cones upon them ; 

Bright before it beat the water. 

Beat the clear and sunny water. 

Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water. 10 

29. Banditti, an Italian word for bands of robbers. 
31. An old moustache, a translation of the French phrase 
vieux moustache, which is used of a veteran soldier. 



ILLINOIS COURSE— THIRD YEAR IT 

There the wrinkled old Nokomis 

Nursed the little Hiawatha, 

Rocked him in his Hnden cradle, 

Bedded soft in moss and rushes. 

Safely bound with reindeer sinews ; 15 

Stilled his fretful wail by saying, 
'i Hush ! the Naked Bear will hear thee ! " 

Lulled him into slumber, singing, 
" Ewa-yea ! my little owlet ! 

Who is this that lights the wigwam ? 20 

With his great eyes lights the wigwam ? 

Ewa-yea! my little owlet I " 

Many things Nokomis taught him 

Of the stars that shine in heaven ; 

Showed him Ishkoodah, the comet, 25 

Ishkoodah, with fiery tresses ; 

Showed the Death-Dance of the spirits. 

Warriors with their plumes and war-clubs. 

Flaring far away to northward 

In the frosty nights of winter ; 30 

Showed the broad, white road in heaven. 

Pathway of the ghosts, the shadows. 

Running straight across the heavens, 

Crowded with the ghosts, the shadows. 

At the door, on summer evenings, 35 

Sat the little Hiawatha ; 

Heard the whispering of the pine-trees. 

Heard the lapping of the water. 

Sounds of music, words of wonder ; 
" Minnie-wawa ! " said the pine-trees, 40 

" Mudway-aushka ! " said the water ; 

Saw the fire-fly, Wah-wah-taysee, 

Flitting through the dusk of evening. 



18 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

With the twinkle of its candle 

Lighting up the brakes and bushes, 45 

And he sang the song of children, 

Sang the song Nokomis taught him : 

" Wah-wah-taysee, little fire-fly. 
Little, flitting, white-fire insect, 
Little, dancing, white-fire creature, 50 

Light me with your little candle. 
Ere upon my bed I lay me. 
Ere in sleep I close my eyelids ! " 
Saw the moon rise from the water 
Rippling, rounding from the water, 55 

Saw the flecks and shadows on it, 
Whispered, " What is that, Nokomis ? " 
And the good Nokomis answered : 

" Once a warrior, very angry. 
Seized his grandmother, and threw her 60 

Up into the sky at midnight ; 
Right against the moon he threw her ; 
'T is her body that you see there." 
Saw the rainbow in the heaven. 
In the eastern sky, the rainbow, 65 

Whispered, " What is that, Nokomis ? " 
And the good Nokomis answered : 

" 'T is the heaven of flowers you see there ; 
All the wild-flowers of the forest, 
All the lilies of the prairie, 70 

When on earth they fade and perish, 
Blossom in that heaven above us." 
When he heard the owls at midnight, 
Hooting, laughing in the forest, 

"What is that?" he cried, in terror; 75 

" What is that," he said, " Nokomis ? " 



ILLINOIS COURSE— THIRD YEAR 19 

And the good Nokomis answered : 

That is but the owl and owlet, 

Talking in their native language, 

Talking, scolding at each other." 80 

Then the little Hiawatha 

Learned of every bird its language, 

Learned their names and all their secrets, 

How they built their nests in summer, 

Where they hid themselves in winter, 85 

Talked with them whene'er he met them, 

Called them " Hiawatha's Chickens." 

Of all beasts he learned the language. 

Learned their names and all their secrets, 

How the beavers built their lodges, 90 

Where the squirrels hid their acorns, 

How the reindeer ran so swiftly. 

Why the rabbit was so timid. 

Talked with them whene'er he met them, 

Called them " Hiawatha's Brothers." 95 



THE PLANTING OF THE APPLE-TREE 

William Ccllen Bryant 

Come, let us plant the apple-tree. 
Cleave the tough greensward with the spade ; 
Wide let its hollow bed be made ; 
There gently lay the roots, and there 
Sift the dark mould with kindly care, 5 

And press it o'er them tenderly, 
As, round the sleeping infant's feet, 
We softly fold the cradle-sheet ; 

So plant we the apple-tree. 



20 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

What plant we in this apple-tree? 10 

Buds, which the breath of summer days 
Shall lengthen into leafy sprays ; 
Boughs where the thrush, with crimson breast, 
Shall haunt and sing and hide her nest ; 

We plant, upon the sunny lea, 15 

A shadow for the noontide hour, 
A shelter from the summer shower, 

When we plant the apple-tree. 

What plant we in this apple-tree? 
Sweets for a hundred flowery springs 20 

To load the May-wind's restless wings, 
When, from the orchard-row, he pours 
Its fragrance through our open doors ; 

A world of blossoms for the bee. 
Flowers for the sick girl's silent room, 25 

For the glad infant sprigs of bloom. 

We plant with the apple-tree. 

What plant we in this apple-tree ? 
Fruits that shall swell in sunny June, 
And redden in the August noon, 30 

And drop, when gentle airs come by, 
That fan the blue September sky. 

While children come, with cries of glee. 
And seek them where the fragrant grass 
Betrays their bed to those who pass, 35 

At the foot of the apple-tree. 

And when, above this apple-tree. 
The winter stars are quivering bright, 
And winds go howling through the night. 



ILLINOIS COURSE— THIRD YEAR 21 

Girls, whose young eyes o'erflow with mirth, 40 
Shall peel its fruit by cottage-hearth, 

And guests in prouder homes shall see, 
Heaped with the grape of Cintra's vine 
And golden orange of the line, 

The fruit of the apple-tree. 45 

The fruitage of this apple-tree 
Winds and our flag of stripe and star 
Shall bear to coasts that lie afar, 
Where men shall wonder at the view. 
And ask in what fair groves they grew ; 50 

And sojourners beyond the sea 
Shall think of childhood's careless day, 
And long, long hours of summer play, 

In the shade of the apple-tree. 

Each year shall give this apple-tree 55 

A broader flush of roseate bloom, 
A deeper maze of verdurous gloom. 
And loosen, when the frost-clouds lower, 
The crisp brown leaves in thicker shower. 

The years shall come and pass, but we 60 

Shall hear no longer, where we lie. 
The sunmier's songs, the autumn's sigh, 

In the boughs of the apple-tree. 

And time shall waste this apple-tree. 
Oh, when its aged branches throw 65 

Thin shadows on the ground below, 
Shall fraud and force and iron will 
Oppress the weak and helpless still ? 



22 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

What shall the tasks of mercy be, 
Amid the toils, the strifes, the tears 70 

Of those who live when length of years 

Is wasting this little apple-tree ? 



" Who planted this old apple-tree ? " 
The children of that distant day 
Thus to some aged man shall say ; 75 

And, gazing on its mossy stem. 
The gray-haired man shall answer them : 

" A poet of the land was he, 
Born in the rude but good old times ; 
'T is said he made some quaint old rhymes 80 

On planting the apple-tree." 



SELECTION FROM HIAWATHA'S SAILING 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 

" Give me of your bark, O Birch-Tree ! 
Of your 3^ellow bark, O Birch-Tree ! 

73. In a letter to Dr. Orville Dewey, written from New York 
in November, 1846, Bryant writes : " I have been, and am, at 
my place on Long Island, planting and transplanting trees, in 
the mist, sixty or seventy ; some for shade, most for fruit. 
Hereafter, men, whose existence is at present merely possible, 
will gather pears from the trees which I have set in the ground, 
and wonder what old covey, — for in those days the slang terms 
of the present time, by the ordinary process of change in lan- 
guages, will have become classical, — what old covey of past 
ages planted them ? " The poem was written in 1849, but not 
published until 1864. 



ILLINOIS COURSE— THIRD YEAR 23 

Growing by the rushing river, 

Tall and stately in the valley ! 

I a light canoe will build me, 5 

Build a swift Cheemaun for sailing, 

That shall float upon the river. 

Like a yellow leaf in Autumn, 

Like a yellow water-lily ! 

Lay aside your cloak, O Birch-Tree I 10 

Lay aside your white-skin wrapper. 
For the Summer-time is coming. 
And the sun is warm in heaven. 
And you need no white-skin wrapper / " 

Thus aloud cried Hiawatha 15 

In the solitary forest, 
By the rushing Taquamenaw, 
When the birds were singing gayly, 
In the Moon of Leaves were singing, 
And the smi, from sleep awaking, 20 

Started up and said, " Behold me ! 
Gheezis, the great Sun, behold me ! " 

And the tree with all its branches 
Rustled in the breeze of morning. 
Saying, with a sigh of patience, 25 

" Take my cloak, O Hiawatha ! " 

With his knife the tree he girdled ; 
Just beneath its lowest branches. 
Just above the roots, he cut it. 
Till the sap came oozing outward ; 30 

Down the trunk, from top to bottom. 
Sheer he cleft the bark asunder. 
With a wooden wedge he raised it, 
Stripped it from the trunk unbroken. 
17. A river of Chippewa County, northeastern Michigan. 



24 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

" Give me of your boughs, O Cedar ! 35 

Of your strong and pliant branches, 
My canoe to make more steady, 
Make more strong and firm beneath me ! " 

Through the smnmit of the Cedar 
Went a sound, a cry of horror, 40 

Went a murmur of resistance ; 
But it whispered, bending downward, 
" Take my boughs, O Hiawatha ! " 

Down he hewed the boughs of cedar. 
Shaped them straightway to a framework, 45 

Like two bows he formed and shaj^ed them, 
Like two bended bows together. 

"Give me of your roots, O Tamarack! 
Of your fibrous roots, O Larch-Tree ! 
My canoe to bind together, 50 

So to bind the ends together 
That the water may not enter. 
That the river may not wet me ! " 

And the Larch, with all its fibres, 
Shivered in the air of morning, 55 

Touched his forehead with its tassels, 
Said, with one long sigh of sorrow, 
" Take them all, O Hiawatha ! " 

From the earth he tore the fibres. 
Tore the tough roots of the Larch-Tree, 60 

Closely sewed the bark together, 
Bound it closely to the framework. 

" Give me of your balm, O Fir-Tree ! 
Of your balsam and your resin. 
So to close the seams together 65 

That the water may not enter. 
That the river may not wet me ! " 



ILLINOIS COURSE— THIRD YEAR 25 

And the Fir-Tree, tall and sombre, 
Sobbed through all its robes of darkness, 
Rattled like a shore with pebbles, 70 

Answered wailing, answered weeping, 
" Take my bahn, O Hiawatha ! " 

And he took the tears of balsam. 
Took the resin of the Fir-Tree, 
Smeared therewith each seam and fissure, 75 

Made each crevice safe from water. 

" Give me of your quills, O Hedgehog ! 
All your quills, O Kagh, the Hedgehog ! 
I will make a necklace of them, 
Make a girdle for my beauty, 80 

And two stars to deck her bosom ! " 
From a hollow tree the Hedgehog 
With his sleepy eyes looked at him, 
Shot his shining quills, like arrows, 
Saying, with a drowsy murmur, 85 

Through the tangle of his whiskers, 
" Take my quills, O Hiawatha ! " 

From the ground the quills he gathered, 
All the little shining arrows, 

Stained them red and blue and yellow, 90 

With the juice of roots and berries ; 
Into his canoe he wrought them, 
Round its waist a shining girdle. 
Round its bows a gleaming necklace, 
On its breast two stars resplendent. 95 

Thus the Birch Canoe was builded 
In the valley, by the river. 
In the bosom of the forest ; 
And the forest's life was in it, 
All its mystery and its magic, 100 



26 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

All tlie lightness of the birch-tree, 
/ All the toughness of the cedar, 

All the larch's supple sinews ; 
And it floated on the river. 
Like a yellow leaf in Autunm, 105 

Like a yellow water-lily. 



THE BROOK 

Alfred, Lord Tennyson 

I COME from haunts of coot and hem, 

I make a sudden sally, 
And sparkle out among the fern, 

To bicker down a valley. 

By thirty hills I hurry down, 5 

Or slip between the ridges. 
By twenty thorps, a little town. 

And half a hundred bridges. 

Till last by PhHip's farm I flow 

To join the brimming river ; 10 

For men may come, and men may go. 
But I go on forever. 

106. " The bark canoe of the Chippeways is, perhaps, the 
most beautiful and light model of all the water crafts that 
ever were invented. They are generally made complete with the 
rind of one birch-tree, and so ingeniously shaped and sewed 
together with roots of the tamarack, which they call wattap, 
that they are water-tight and ride upon the water, as light as a 
cork." — Catlin, p. 605. 



ILLINOIS COURSE— THIRD YEAR 27 

I chatter over stony ways, 

In little sharps and trebles ; 
I bubble into eddying bays ; 15 

I babble on the pebbles. 

With many a curve my bank I fret 

By many a field and fallow, 
And many a fairy foreland set 

With willow-weed and mallow. 20 

I chatter, chatter, as I flow 

To join the brimming river ; 
For men may come, and men may go, 

But I go on forever. 

I wind about, and in and out, 25 

With here a blossom sailing. 
And here and there a lusty trout. 

And here and there a grayling. 

And here and there a foamy flake 

Upon me as I travel, 30 

With many a silvery waterbreak 
Above the golden gravel. 

And draw them all along and flow 

To join the brimming river. 
For men may come, and men may go, 35 

But I go on forever. 

I steal by lawns and grassy plots, 

I slide by hazel covers, 
I move the sweet forget-me-nots 

That grow for happy lovers. 



28 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance, 
Among my skimming swallows ; 

I make the netted sunbeam dance 
Against my sandy shallows. 

I murmur under moon and stars 45 

» In brambly wildernesses ; 

I linger by my shingly bars ; 
I loiter round my cresses ; 

And out again I curve and flow 

To join the brimming river, 50 

For men may come, and men may go. 
But I go on forever. 



SPRING 

Celia Thaxter 

The alder by the river 

Shakes out her powdery curls ; 
The willow buds in silver 

For little boys and girls. 

The little birds fly over 5 

And oh, how sweet they sing ! 

To tell the happy children 

That once again 't is spring. 

The gay green grass comes creeping 

So soft beneath their feet ; 10 

The frogs begin to ripple 

A music clear and sweet. 



ILLINOIS COURSE-— THIRD YEAR 29 

And buttercups are coming, 

And scarlet columbine, 
And in the sunny meadows 15 

The dandelions shine. 

And just as many daisies 

As their soft hands can hold 

The little ones may gather, 

All fair in white and gold. 20 

Here blows the warm red clover. 
There peeps the violet blue ; 

O happy little children ! 

God made them all for you. 



FOURTH YEAR 

SEPTEMBER 

Helen Hunt Jackson 

The golden-rod is yellow ; 

The corn is turning brown ; 
The trees in apple orchards 

With fruit are bending down. 

The gentian's bluest fringes 5 

Are curling in the sun ; 
In dusty pods the milkweed 

Its hidden silk has spun. 

The sedges flaunt their harvest, 

In every meadow nook ; 10 

And asters by the brook-side ' 

Make asters in the brook. 

From dewy lanes at morning 

The grapes' sweet odors rise ; 
At noon the roads all flutter 15 

With yellow butterflies. 

By all these lovely tokens 

September days are here, 
With summer's best of weather, 

And autumn's best of cheer. 20 



ILLINOIS COURSE— FOURTH YEAR 31 

But none of all this beauty 

Which floods the earth and air 

Is unto me the secret 

Which makes September fair. 

'T is a thing which I remember ; 25 

To name it thrills me yet ; 
One day of one September 

I never can forget. 



THE LEAP OF ROUSHAN BEG 
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 

Mounted on Kyrat strong and fleet, 
His chestnut steed with four white feet, 

Roushan Beg, called Kurroglou, 
Son of the road and bandit chief, 
Seeking refuge and relief, 5 

Up the mountain pathway flew. 

Such was Kyrat's wondrous speed, 
Never yet could any steed 

Reach the dust-cloud in his course. 
More than maiden, more than wife, 10 

More than gold and next to life 

Roushan the Robber loved his horse. 

In the land that lies beyond 
Erzeroum and Trebizond, 

Garden-girt his fortress stood ; 15 

Plundered khan, or caravan 
Journeying north from Koordistan, 

Gave him wealth and wine and food. 



32 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

Seven hundred and fourscore 

Men at arms his livery wore, 20 

Did his bidding night and day ; 
Now, through regions all unknown. 
He was wandering, lost, alone. 

Seeking without guide his way. 

Suddenly the pathway ends, 25 

Sheer the precipice descends. 

Loud the torrent roars unseen ; 
Thirty feet from side to side 
Yawns the chasm ; on air must ride 

He who crosses this ravine. 30 

Following close in his pursuit, 
At the precipice's foot 

Reyhan the Arab of Orfah 
Halted with his hundred men. 
Shouting upward from the glen, 35 

" La lUah iUa Allah ! " 

Gentty Roushan Beg caressed 
Kyrat's forehead, neck, and breast ; 

Kissed him upon both his eyes, 
Sang to him in his wild way, 40 

As upon the topmost spray , * 

Sings a bird before it flies. 

" O my Kyrat, O my steed. 
Round and slender as a reed. 

Carry me this peril through ! 45 

Satin housings shall be thine. 
Shoes of gold, O Kyrat mine, 

O thou soul of Kurroglou I 



ILLINOIS COURSE — FOURTH YEAR 33 

Soft thy skin as silken skein, 

Soft as woman's hair thy mane, 50 

Tender are thine eyes and true ; 
All thy hoofs like ivory shine. 
Polished bright ; O life of mine, 

Leap, and rescue Kurroglou ! " 

Kyrat, then, the strong and fleet, 55 

Drew together his four white feet. 

Paused a moment on the verge. 
Measured with his eye the space. 
And into the air's embrace 

Leaped as leaps the ocean surge. 60 

As the ocean surge o'er sand 
Bears a swimmer safe to land, 

Kyrat safe his rider bore ; 
Rattling down the deep abyss 
Fragments of the precipice 65 

Rolled like pebbles on a shore. 

Roushan's tasselled cap of red 
Trembled not upon his head. 

Careless sat he and upright ; 
Neither hand nor bridle shook, 70 

Nor his head he turned to look, 

As he galloped out of sight. 

Flash of harness in the air, 
Seen a moment like tlie glare 

Of a sword drawn from its sheath ; 75 

Thus the phantom horseman passed, 
And the shadow that he cast 

Leaped the cataract underneath. 



34 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

Reyhan the Arab held his breath 

While this vision of life and death 80 

Passed above him. " Allahu ! " 
Cried he. " In all Koordistan 
Lives there not so brave a man 

As this Robber Kurrogiou ! " 

OCTOBER'S BRIGHT BLUE WEATHER 

Helen Hunt Jackson 

O SUNS and skies and clouds of June, 

And flowers of June together, 
Ye cannot rival for one hour 

October's bright blue weather, 

When loud the bumble-bee makes haste, 5 

Belated, thriftless, vagrant, 
And Golden-Rod is dying fast. 

And lanes with grapes are fragrant ; 

When Gentians roll their fringes tight 

To save them for the morning, 10 

And chestnuts fall from satin burrs 
Without a sound of warning; 

When on the ground red apj)les lie 

Li piles like jewels shining. 
And redder still on old stone walls 15 

Are leaves of woodbine twining; 

When all the lovely wayside things 
Their white-winged seeds are sowing. 

And in the fields, still green and fair. 

Late aftermaths are growing ; 20 



ILLINOIS COURSE — FOURTH YEAR 35 

When springs run low, and on tlie brooks, 

In idle golden freighting. 
Bright leaves sink noiseless in the hush 

Of woods, for winter waiting ; 

When comrades seek sweet country haunts, 25 

By twos and twos together. 
And count like misers hour by hour, , 

October's bright blue weather. 

O suns and skies and flowers of June, 

Count all your boasts together, 30 

Love loveth best of all the year 
October's bright blue weather. 



THE PUMPKIN 

John Greenleaf Whittier 

O, GREENLY and fair in the lands of the sun, 
The vines of the gourd and the rich melon run, 
And the rock and the tree and the cottage enfold. 
With broad leaves all greenness and blossoms all gold. 
Like that which o'er Nineveh's prophet once grew, 5 
While he waited to know that his warning was true. 
And longed for the storm-cloud, and listened in vain 
For the rush of the whirlwind and red fire-rain. 

On the banks of the Xenil the dark Spanish maiden 
Comes up with the fruit of the tangled vine laden ; 10 
And the Creole of Cuba laughs out to behold 
Through orange-leaves shining the broad spheres of 
gold; 



36 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

Yet with dearer delight from his home in the North, 
On the fields of his harvest the Yankee looks forth, 
Where crook-necks are coiling and yellow fruit shines, 15 
And the sun of September melts down on his vines. 

Ah ! on Thanksgiving day, when from East and from 

West, 
From North and from South come the pilgrim and 

guest, 
When the gray-haired New-Englander sees round his 

board 
The old broken links of affection restored, 20 

When the care-wearied man seeks his mother once 

more. 
And the worn matron smiles where the girl smiled 

before. 
What moistens the lip and what brightens the eye ? 
What calls back the past, like the rich Pumpkin 

pie? 

O,^ fruit loved of boyhood ! — the old days recalling, 25 
When wood-grapes were purpling and brown nuts were 

falling ! 
When wild, ugly faces we carved in its skin, 
Glaring out through the dark with a candle within ! 
When we laughed round the corn-heap, with hearts all 

in tune. 
Our chair a broad pumpkin, — our lantern the moon, 30 
Telling tales of the fairy who travelled like steam. 
In a pumpkin-shell coach, with two rats for her team ! 

Then thanks for thy present \ — none sweeter or better 
E'er smoked from an oven or circled a platter ! 



ILLINOIS COURSE — FOURTH YEAR 37 

Fairer hands never wrought at a pastry more fine, 35 
Brighter eyes never vi^atched o'er its baking, than 

thine ! 
And the prayer, v^hich my mouth is too full to ex- 
press. 
Swells my heart that thy shadow may never be less, 
That the days of thy lot may be lengthened below, 
And the fame of thy worth like a pumpkin- vine 
grow, 40 

And thy life be as sweet, and its last sunset sky 
Golden-tinted and fair as thy own Pumpkin pie ! 

THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 

The suggestion of the poem came from the smithy which the poet 
passed daily, and which stood beneath a horse-chestnut tree not far 
from his house in Cambridge. The tree, against the protests of Mr. 
Longfellow and others, was removed in 1876, on the ground that it 
imperilled drivers of heavy loads who passed under it. 

Under a spreading chestnut-tree 

The village smithy stands ; 
The smith, a mighty man is he, 

With large and sinewy hands ; 
And the muscles of his brawny arms 5 

Are strong as iron bands. 

His hair is crisp, and black, and long. 

His face is like the tan ; 
His brow is wet with honest sweat. 

He earns whate'er he can, 10 

And looks the whole world in the face, 

For he owes not any man. 



38 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

Week in, week out, from morn till night, 

You can hear his bellows blow ; 
You can hear him swing his heavy sledge, 15 

With measured beat and slow. 
Like a sexton ringing the village bell. 

When the evening sun is low. 

And children coming home from school 

Look in at the open door ; 20 

They love to see the flaming forge, 
And hear the bellows roar. 

And catch the burning sparks that fly 
Like chaff from a threshing-floor. 

He goes on Sunday to the church, 25 

And sits among his boys ; 
He hears the parson pray and preach. 

He hears his daughter's voice. 
Singing in the village choir, 

And it makes his heart rejoice. 30 

It sounds to him like her mother's voice, 

Singing in Paradise ! 
He needs must think of her once more. 

How in the grave she lies ; 
And with his hard, rough hand he wipes 35 

A tear out of his eyes. 

Toiling, — rejoicing, — sorrowing, 
Onward through life he goes ; 

23. After this poem had been printed for some time, Mr. Long- 
fellow was disposed to change the word '* catch " to " watch," but 
the original form had grown so familiar that he decided to 
leave it. 



ILLINOIS COURSE — FOURTH YEAR 39 

Each morning sees some task begin, 

Each evening sees it close ; 40 

Something attempted, something done, 

Has earned a night's repose. 

Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend, 

For the lesson thou hast taught ! 
Thus at the flaming forge of life 45 

Our fortunes must be wrought ; 
Thus on its sounding anvil shaped 

Each burning deed and thought. 



THE MOUNTAIN AND THE SQUIRREL 
(THE FABLE) 

Ralph Waldo Emerson 

The mountain and the squirrel 
Had a quarrel. 

And the former called the latter " Little prig; " 
Bun replied, 
"You are doubtless very big, 5 

But all sorts of things and weather 
Must be taken in together 
To make up a year. 
And a sphere : 

And I think it no disgrace 10 

To occupy my place. 
If I 'm not so large as you. 
You are not so small as I, 
And not half so spry ; 

I '11 not deny you make 15 

A very pretty squirrel track. 



40 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

Talents differ ; all is well and wisely put ; 
If I cannot carry forests on my back, 
Neither can you crack a nut." 



THE SPARROWS 

Celia Thaxteb 

In the far-off land of Norway, 

Where the winter lingers late, 
And long for the singing-birds and flowers 

The little children wait ; 

When at last the summer ripens 5 

And the harvest is gathered in. 
And food for the bleak, drear days to come 

The toiling people win ; 

Through aU the land the children 

In the golden fields remain 10 

Till their busy little hands have gleaned 
A generous sheaf of grain ; 

All the stalks by the reapers forgotten 

They glean to the very least. 
To save till the cold December, 15 

For the sparrows' Christmas feast. 

And then through the frost-locked country 
There happens a wonderful thing : 

The sparrows flock north, south, east, west. 

For the children's offering. 20 



ILLINOIS COURSE — FOURTH YEAR 41 

Of a sudden, the day before Christmas, 

The twittering crowds arrive, 
And the bitter, wintry air at once 

With their chirping is all alive. 

They perch upon roof and gable, 25 

On porch and fence and tree, 
They flutter about the windows 

And peer in curiously. 

And meet the eyes of the children, 

Who eagerly look out 30 

With cheeks that bloom like roses red. 

And greet them with welcoming shout. 

On the joyous Christmas morning. 

In front of every door 
A tall pole, crowned with clustering grain, 35 

Is set the birds before. 

And which are the happiest, truly 

It would be hard to tell ; 
The sparrows who share in the Christmas cheer. 

Or the children who love them well ! 40 

How sweet that they should remember. 

With faith so full and sure. 
That the children's bounty awaited them 

The whole wide country o'er ! 

When this pretty story was told me 45 

By one who had helped to rear 
The rustling grain for the merry birds 
In Norway, many a year, 



42 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

I thought that our little children 

Would like to know it too, 50 

It seems to me so beautiful, 
So blessed a thing to do. 

To make God's innocent creatures see 

In every child a friend. 
And on our faithful kindness 55 

So fearlessly depend. 



PAUL REVERE'S RIDE 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 

Mr. Longfellow imagined a party of friends met at a country inn, 
and telling tales before the fire. The first of these Tales of a Way- 
side Inn was by the landlord, and is this story of Paul Revere. Revere 
was an American patriot, a silversmith and engraver by trade, whose 
tea-pots and cream jugs and tankards may be found in old Boston 
families. He was a spirited man, and in the secrets of the Boston 
patriots. 

Listen, my children, and you shall hear 

Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, 

On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five ; 

Hardly a man is now alive 

Who remembers that famous day and year. 5 

He said to his friend, '' If the British march 
By land or sea from the town to-night, 
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch 
Of the North Church tower as a signal light, — 

9. There has been some discussion as to the church tower from 
which the lanterns were hung, some claiming that the church was 
the old North Meeting-bouse in North Square, pulled down 



ILLINOIS COURSE — FOURTH YEAR 43 

One, if by land, and two, if by sea ; 10 

And I on the opposite shore will be, 
Eeady to ride and spread the alarm 
Through every Middlesex village and farm. 
For the country folk to be up and to arm." 

Then he said, " Good night ! " and with muffled oar 15 

Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore, 

Just as the moon rose over the bay. 

Where swinging wide at her moorings lay 

The Somerset, British man-of-war ; 

A phantom ship, with each mast and spar 20 

Across the moon like a prison bar. 

And a huge black hulk, that was magnified 

By its own reflection in the tide. 

Meanwhile his friend, through alley and street, 
Wanders and watches with eager ears, 25 

Till in the silence around him he hears 
The muster of men at the barrack door. 
The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet, 
And the measured tread of the grenadiers, 
Marching down to their boats on the shore. 30 

Then he climbed the tower of the Old North Church, 
By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread, 

afterward for fuel, during the siege of Boston ; but the evidence 
points more clearly to Christ Church, still standing, and often 
spoken of as the North Church. The poet has departed some- 
what from the actual historic facts, since Revere did not watch 
for the lights, nor did he reach Concord. In 1894, when April 
19 was made a holiday in Massachusetts, under the name of 
Patriots' Day, there was an attempt at acting out the famous 
story of the ride. 



44 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

To the belfry-chamber overhead, 

And startled the pigeons from their perch 

On the sombre rafters, that round him made 35 

Masses and moving shapes of shade, — 

By the trembling ladder, steep and tall. 

To the highest window in the wall. 

Where he paused to listen and look down 

A moment on the roofs of the town, 40 

And the moonlight flowing over all. 

Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead, 

In their night encampment on the hill, 

Wrapped in silence so deep and still 

That he could hear, like a sentinel's tread, 45 

The watchful night-wind, as it went 

Creeping along from tent to tent. 

And seeming to whisper, " All is well ! " 

A moment only he feels the spell 

Of the place and the hour, and the secret dread 50 

Of the lonely belfry and the dead ; 

For suddenly all his thoughts are bent 

On a shadowy something far away. 

Where the river widens to meet the bay, — 

A line of black that bends and floats 55 

On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats. 

Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride. 

Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride 

On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere. 

Now he patted his horse's side, 60 

Now gazed at the landscape far and near, 

Then, impetuous, stamped the earth. 

And turned and tightened his saddle-girth ; 



ILLINOIS COURSE — FOURTH YEAR 45 

But mostly he watched with eager search 

The belfry-tower of the Old North Church, 65 

As it rose above the graves on the hill, 

Lonely and spectral and sombre and still. 

And lo ! as he looks, on the belfry's height 

A glimmer, and then a gleam of light ! 

He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns, 70 

But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight 

A second lamp in the belfry burns ! 

A hurry of hoofs in a village street, 

A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark, 

And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark 75 

Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet : 

That was all ! And yet, through the gloom and the 

light. 
The fate of a nation was riding that night ; 
And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight, 
Kindled the land into flame with its heat. 80 

He has left the village and mounted the steep. 

And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep, 

Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides ; 

And under the alders that skirt its edge, 

Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge, 85 

Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides. 

It was twelve by the village clock. 

When he crossed the bridge into Medford town. 

He heard the crowing of the cock. 

And the barking of the farmer's dog, 90 

And felt the damp of the river fog. 

That rises after the sun goes down. 



46 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

It was one by the village clock, 

When he galloped into Lexington. 

He saw the gilded weathercock 95 

Swim in the moonlight as he passed, 

And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare, 

Gaze at him with a spectral glare. 

As if they already stood aghast 

At the bloody work they would look upon. 100 

It was two by the village clock, 

When he came to the bridge in Concord town. 

He heard the bleating of the flock, 

And the twitter of birds among the trees, 

And felt the breath of the morning breeze 105 

Blowing over the meadows brown. 

And one was safe and asleep in his bed 

Who at the bridge would be first to faU, 

Who that day would be lying dead. 

Pierced by a British musket-ball. 110 

You know the rest. In the books you have read. 
How the British Regulars fired and fled, — 
How the farmers gave them ball for ball, 
From behind each fence and farm-yard wall. 
Chasing the red-coats down the lane, 115 

Then crossing the fields to emerge again 
Under the trees at the turn of the road, 
And only pausing to fire and load. 

So through the night rode Paul Revere ; 
And so through the night went his cry of alarm 
To every Middlesex village and farm, — 121 

A cry of defiance and not of fear, 



ILLINOIS COURSE — FOURTH YEAR 47 

A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door, 

And a word that shall echo forevermore ! 

For, borne on the night-wind of the Past, 125 

Through all our history, to the last. 

In the hour of darkness and peril and need, 

The people will waken and listen to hear 

The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed, 

And the midnight message of Paul Revere. 130 



SELECTIONS FROM SNOW-BOUND 

John Greenleaf Whittier 

THE STORM 

Unw ARMED by any sunset light 

The gray day darkened into night, 

A night made hoary with the swarm 

And whirl-dance of the blinding storm, 

As zigzag wavering to and fro 5 

Crossed and recrossed the winged snow: 

And ere the early bedtime came 

The white drift piled the window-frame. 

And through the glass the clothes-line posts 

Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts. 10 

So all night long the storm roared on : 

The morning broke without a sun; 

In tiny spherule traced with lines 

Of Nature's geometric signs. 

In starry flake and pellicle 15 

All day the hoary meteor fell ; 

And, when the second morning shone, 



48 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

We looked upon a world unknown, 

On nothing we could call our own. 

Around the glistening wonder bent 20 

The blue walls of the firmament, 

No cloud above, no earth below, — 

A universe of sky and snow ! 

The old familiar sights of ours 

Took marvellous shapes ; strange domes and towers 25 

Rose up where sty or corn-crib stood, 

Or garden-wall or belt of wood ; 

A smooth white mound the brush-pile showed, 

A fenceless drift what once was road ; 

The bridle-j)ost an old man sat 30 

With loose-flung coat and high cocked hat; 

The well-curb had a Chinese roof ; 

And even the long sweep, high* aloof. 

In its slant splendor, seemed to tell 

Of Pisa's leaning miracle. 35 



THE KITCHEN SCENE 

As night drew on, and, from the crest 
Of wooded knolls that ridged the west. 
The sun, a snow-blown traveller, sank 
From sight beneath the smothering bank, 

35. The Leaning Tower of Pisa, in Italy, which inclines from 
the perpendicular a little more than six feet in eighty, is a cam- 
panile, or bell-tower, built of white marble, very beautiful, but 
so famous for its singular deflection from perpendicularity as 
to be known almost wholly as a curiosity. Opinions differ as to 
the leaning being the result of accident or design, but the better 
judgment makes it an effect of the character of the soil on which 
the town is built. The Cathedral to which it belongs has suffered 
so much from a similar cause that there is not a vertical line in it. 



ILLINOIS COURSE — FOURTH YEAR 49 

We piled with care our nightly stack 5 

Of wood against the chimney-back, — 

The oaken log, green, huge, and thick, 

And on its top the stout back-stick ; 

The knotty forestick laid apart. 

And filled between with curious art 10 

The ragged brush ; then, hovering near, 

We watched the first red blaze appear. 

Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam 

On whitewashed wall and sagging beam, 

Until the old, rude-furnished room 15 

Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom ; 

While radiant with a mimic flame 

Outside the sparkling drift became. 

And through the bare-boughed lilac-tree 

Our own warm hearth seemed blazing free. 20 

The crane and pendent trammels showed. 

The Turk's heads on the andirons glowed ; 

While childish fancy, prompt to tell 

The meaning of the miracle, 

Whispered the old rhyme : " Under the tree^ 25 

Wlienfire outdoors hums merrily^ 

There the witches are making tea''' 

The moon above the eastern wood 

Shone at its full ; the hill-range stood 

Transfigured in the silver flood, 30 

Its blown snows flashing cold and keen, 

Dead white, save where some sharp ravine 

Took shadow, or the sombre green 

Of hemlocks turned to pitchy black 

Against the whiteness of their back. 35 

For such a world and such a night 



50 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

Most fitting that unwarming light, 
Which only seemed where'er it fell 
To make the coldness visible. 

Shut in from all the world without, 40 

We sat the clean-winged hearth about, 

Content to let the north-wind roar 

In baffled rage at pane and door, 

While the red logs before us beat 

The frost-line back with tropic heat ; 45 

And ever, when a louder blast 

Shook beam and rafter as it passed. 

The merrier up its roaring draught 

The great throat of the chimney laughed ; 

The house-dog on his paws outspread 50 

Laid to the fire his drowsy head, 

The cat's dark silhouette on the wall 

A couchant tiger's seemed to fall ; 

And, for the winter fireside meet, 

Between the andirons' straddling feet, 55 

The mug of cider simmered slow. 

The apples sputtered in a row. 

And, close at hand, the basket stood. 

With nuts from brown October's wood. 

THE EMPEROR'S BIRD'S-NEST 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. 

Once the Emperor Charles of Spain, 
With his swarthy, grave commanders, 

I forget in what campaign, 

Long besieged, in mud and rain. 

Some old frontier town of Flanders. 5 



ILLINOIS COURSE— FOURTH YEAR 51 

Up and down the dreary camp, 

In great boots of Spanish leather, 
Striding with a measured tramp. 
These Hidalgos, dull and damp. 

Cursed the Frenchmen, cursed the weather. 10 

Thus as to and fro they went, 

Over upland and through hollow, 
Giving their impatience vent, 
Perched upon the Emperor's tent. 

In her nest, they spied a swaUow. 15 

Yes, it was a swallow's nest, 

Built of clay and hair of horses. 
Mane, or tail, or dragoon's crest. 
Found on hedge-rows east and west, 

After skirmish of the forces. 20 



Then an old Hidalgo said, 

As he twirled his gray mustachio, 
" Sure this swallow overhead 
Thinks the Emperor's tent a shed, 

And the Emperor but a Macho ! " 25 

Hearing his imperial name 

Coupled with those words of malice, 

Half in anger, half in shame, 

Forth the great campaigner came 

Slowly from his canvas palace. 30 

25. Macho. Pronounced Macho. It signifies in Spanish a 
mule. 



52 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

" Let no hand the bird molest," 

Said he solemnly, " nor hurt her ! " 
Adding then, by way of jest, 

" Golondrina is my guest, 

'T is the wife of some deserter ! " 35 

Swift as bowstring speeds a shaft, 

Through the camp was spread the rumor. 

And the soldiers, as they quaffed 

Flemish beer at dinner, laughed 

At the Emperor's pleasant humor. 40 

So unharmed and unafraid 

Sat the swallow still and brooded, 
Till the constant cannonade 
Through the walls a breach had made, 

And the siege was thus concluded. 45 

Then the army, elsewhere bent. 

Struck its tents as if disbanding. 
Only not the Emperor's tent. 
For he ordered, ere he went. 

Very curtly, '' Leave it standing ! " 50 

So it stood there all alone. 

Loosely flapping, torn and tattered. 

Till the brood was fledged and flown 

Singing o'er those walls of stone 

Which the cannon-shot had shattered. 55 

34. Golondrina, the feminine form of golondrino, a swallow, 
and also a jocose name for a deserter. 



ILLINOIS COURSE — FOURTH YEAR 53 

OUR HEROES 

Phcebe Gary 

Here 's a hand to the boy who has courage 

To do what he knows to be right ; 
When he falls in the way of temptation 

He has a hard battle to fight. 
Who strives against self and his comrades 5 

Will find a most powerful foe : 
All honor to him if he conquers ; 

A cheer for the boy who says " No " ! 

There 's many a battle fought daily 

The world knows nothing about ; 10 

There 's many a brave little soldier 

Whose strength puts a legion to rout. 
And he who fights sin single-handed 

Is more of a hero, I say, 
Than he who leads soldiers to battle, 15 

And conquers by arms in the fray. 

Be steadfast, my boy, when you 're tempted. 

And do what you know to be right ; 
Stand firm by the colors of manhood, 

And you will o'ercome in the fight. 20 

" The right ! " be your battle cry ever 

In waging the warfare of life ; 
And God, who knows who are the heroes, 

WiU give you the strength for the strife. 



54 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 
WRITTEN IN MARCH 

While resting- on the bridge at the foot of Brother's Water. 
William Wordsworth 

The Cock is crowing, 

The stream is flowing, 

The small birds twitter, 

The lake doth glitter. 
The green field sleeps in the sun ; 5 

The oldest and youngest 

Are at work with the strongest ; 

The cattle are grazing. 

Their heads never raising ; 
There are forty feeding like one ! 10 

Like an army defeated 

The snow hath retreated. 

And now doth fare ill 

On the top of the bare hill ; 
The ploughboy is whooping — anon — anon : 15 

There 's joy in the mountains ; 

There 's life in the fountains 5 

Small clouds are sailing, 

Blue sky prevailing ; 
The rain is over and gone ! 20 



SUN AND SHADOW 

Oliver Wendell Holmes 

As I look from the isle, o'er its billows of green, 
To the biUows of foani-crested blue, 



ILLINOIS COURSE — FOURTH YEAR 55 

Yon bark, that afar in the distance is seen, 
Half dreaming, my eyes will pursue : 

Now dark in the shadow, she scatters the spray 5 

As the chaff in the stroke of the flail ; 

Now white as the sea-gull, she flies on her way, 
The sun gleaming bright on her sail. 

Yet her pilot is thinking of dangers to shun, — 

Of breakers that whiten and roar ; 10 

How little he cares, if in shadow or sun 

They see him who gaze from the shore ! 
He looks to the beacon that looms from the reef. 

To the rock that is under his lee. 
As he drifts on the blast, like a wind-wafted leaf, 15 

O'er the gulfs of the desolate sea. 

Thus drifting afar to the dim-vaiUted caves 

Where life and its ventures are laid. 
The dreamers who gaze while we battle the waves 

May see us in sunshine or shade ; 20 

Yet true to our course, though the shadows grow dark. 

We '11 trim our broad sail as before, 
And stand by the rudder that governs the bark. 

Nor ask how we look from the shore I 



THE SANDPIPER 

Celia Thaxter 

Across the lonely beach we flit. 

One little sandpiper and I, 
And fast I gather, bit by bit. 

The scattered driftwood, bleached and dry. 



56 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

The wild waves reach their hands for it, 5 

The wild wind raves, the tide runs high, 

As up and down the beach we flit, 
One little sandpiper and I. 

Above our heads the sullen clouds 

Scud, black and swift, across the sky ; lo 

Like silent ghosts in misty shrouds 

Stand out the white lighthouses high. 
Almost as far as eye can reach 

I see the close-reefed vessels fly, 
As fast we flit along the beach, 15 

One little sandpiper and I. 

I watch him as he skims along, 

Uttering his sweet and mournful cry ; 
He starts not at my fitful song. 

Nor flash of fluttering drapery. 20 

He has no thought of any wrong. 

He scans me with a fearless eye ; 
Stanch friends are we, well tried and strong. 

The little sandpiper and I. 

Comrade, where wilt thou be to-night, 25 

When the loosed storm breaks furiously ? 
My driftwood fire will burn so bright ! 

To what warm shelter canst thou fly? 
I do not fear for thee, though wroth 

The tempest rushes through the sky ; 30 

For are we not God's children both. 

Thou, little sandpiper, and I ? 



ILLINOIS COURSE— FOURTH YEAR 57 

THE BLUEBIRD 

Eben Eugene Rexfobd 

Listen a moment, I pray you ; what was that sound 

that I heard ? 
Wind in the budding branches, the ripple of brooks, or 

a bird ? 
Hear it again, above us ! and see a flutter of wings ! 
The bluebird knows it is April, and soars toward the 

sun and sings. 
Never the song of the robin could make my heart so 

glad ; 5 

When I hear the bluebird singing in spring, I forget 

to be sad. 

Hear it ! a ripple of music ! sunshine changed into song ! 
It sets me thinking of summer when the days and 

their dreams are long. 
Winged lute that we call a bluebird, you blend in a 

silver strain 
The sound of the laughing water, the patter of spring's 

sweet rain. 10 

The voice of the winds, the sunshine, and fragrance of 

blossoming things, 
Ah ! you are an April poem, that God has dowered 

with wings ! 



58 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

SONG — THE OWL 

Alfred, Lord Tennyson 



When cats run home and light is come, 

And dew is cold upon the ground, 
And the far-off stream is dumb, 
And the whirring sail goes round. 
And the whirring sail goes round ; 5 

Alone and warming his five wits, 
The white owl in the belfry sits. 

II 

When merry milkmaids click the latch, 
And rarely smells the new-mown hay. 
And the cock hath sung beneath the thatch 10 
Twice or thrice his roundelay, 
Twice or thrice his roundelay ; 
Alone and warming his five wits. 
The white owl in the belfry sits. 



FIFTH YEAR 



BARBARA FEIETCHIE 

John Greenleaf Whittier 

" This poem," says Mr. Whittier, " was written in strict conformity 
to the account of the incident as I had it from respectable and trust- 
worthy sources. It has since been the subject of a good deal of con- 
flicting testimony, and the story was probably incorrect in some of its 
details. It is admitted by all that Barbara Frietchie was no myth, 
but a worthy and highly esteemed gentlewoman, intensely loyal and a 
hater of the Slavery Rebellion, holding her Union flag sacred and 
keeping it with her Bible ; that when the Confederates halted before 
her house, and entered her dooryard, she denounced them in vigorous 
language, shook her cane in their faces, and drove them out ; and 
when General Burnside's troops followed close upon Jackson's, she 
waved her flag and cheered them. It is stated that May Quantrell, a 
brave and loyal lady in another part of the city, did wave her flag in 
sight of the Confederates. It is possible that there has been a blend- 
ing of the two incidents." 

Up from the meadows rich with corn, 
Clear in the cool September morn, 



The clustered spires of Frederick stand 
Green-walled by the hills of Maryland. 

Round about them orchards sweep, 
Apple and peach tree fruited deep, 

Fair as the garden of the Lord 

To the eyes of the famished rebel horde^ 



60 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

On that pleasant morn of the early fall 

When Lee marched over the mountain-wall ; lo 

Over the mountains winding down, 
Horse and foot, into Frederick town. 

Forty flags with their silver stars, 
Forty flags with their crimson bars, 

Flapped in the morning wind : the sun 15 

Of noon looked down, and saw not one. 



Up rose old Barbara Frietchie then, 
Bowed with her fourscore years and ten ; 

Bravest of all in Frederick town. 

She took up the flag the men hauled down ; 20 

In her attic window the staff she set. 
To show that one heart was loyal yet. 

Up the street came the rebel tread, 
Stonewall Jackson riding ahead. 

Under his slouched hat left and right 25 

He glanced ; the old flag met his sight. 

Halt ! " — the dust-brown ranks stood fast. 
Fire ! " — out blazed the rifle-blast. 

It shivered the window, pane and sash ; 

It rent the banner with seam and gash. 30 



ILLINOIS COURSE— FIFTH YEAR 61 

Quick, as it fell, from the broken staff 
Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf. 

She leaned far out on the window-sill, 
And shook it forth with a royal will. 

'' Shoot, if you must, this old gray head, 35 

But spare your country's flag," she said. 

A shade of sadness, a blush of shame, 
Over the face of the leader came ; 

The nobler nature within him stirred 

To life at that woman's deed and word ; 40 

'^ Who touches a hair of yon gray head , 
Dies like a dog ! March on ! " he said. 

All day long through Frederick street 
Sounded the tread of marching feet : 

All day long that free flag tost 45 

Over the heads of the rebel host. 

Ever its torn folds rose and fell 

On the loyal winds that loved it well ; 

And through the hill-gaps sunset light 

Shone over it with a warm good-night. 50 

Barbara Frietchie's work is o'er. 

And the Rebel rides on his raids no more. 



62 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

Honor to her ! and let a tear 

Fall, for her sake, on Stonewall's bier. 

Over Barbara Frietchie's grave, 55 

Flag of Freedom and Union, wave ! 

Peace and order and beanty draw 
Round thy symbol of light and law ; 

And ever the stars above look down 

On thy stars below in Frederick town ! 60 



AN ORDER FOR A PICTURE 

Alice Gary 

Oh, good painter, tell me true. 

Has your hand the cunnmg to draw 
Shapes of things that you never saw? 

Aye? Well, here is an order for you. 

Woods and corn fields, a little brown, — 5 

The picture must not be over-bright, — 
Yet aU in the golden and gracious light 
Of a cloud, when the summer sun is down. 
Alway and alway, night and morn, 
Woods upon woods, with fields of corn 10 

Lying between them, not quite sere. 
And not in the full, thick, leafy bloom. 
When the wind can hardly find breathing-room 

Under their tassels, — cattle near, 
Biting shorter the short green grass, 15 

And a hedge of sumach and sassafras. 



ILLINOIS COURSE — FIFTH YEAR 63 

With bluebirds twittering all around, — 
(Ah, good painter, you can't paint sound !) — 

These, and the house where I was born. 
Low and little, and black and old, 20 

With children, many as it can hold, 
All at the windows, open wide, — 
Heads and shoulders clear outside. 
And fair young faces all ablush : 

Perhaps you may have seen, some day, 25 

Roses crowding the self-same way, 
Out of a wilding, wayside bush. 

Listen closer. When you have done 

With woods and corn fields and grazing herds, 

A lady, the loveliest ever the sun 30 

Looked down upon you must paint for me : 
Oh, if I only could make you see 

The clear blue eyes, the tender smile. 
The sovereign sweetness, the gentle grace, 
The woman's soul, and the angel's face 35 

That are beaming on me all the while, 
I need not speak these foolish words : 

Yet one word tells you all I would say, — 
She is my mother : you will agree 

That all the rest may be thrown away. 40 

Two little urchins at her knee 
You must paint, sir : one like me, — 
The other with a clearer brow, 
And the light of his adventurous eyes 
Flashing with boldest enterprise : 45 

At ten years old he went to sea, — 

God knoweth if he be living now, — 



64 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

He sailed in the good ship Commodore, 
Nobody ever crossed her track 
To bring us news, and she never came back. 50 

Ah, it is twenty long years and more 
Since that old ship went out of the bay 

With my great-hearted brother on her deck : 

I watched him till he shrank to a speck. 
And his face was toward me all the way. 55 

Bright his hair was, a golden brown, 

The time we stood at our mother's knee : 
That beauteous head, if it did go down. 

Carried sunshine into the sea ! 

Out in the fields one summer night 60 

We were together, liaK afraid 

Of the corn-leaves' rustling, and of the shade 
Of the high hills, stretching so still and far, — 
Loitering till after the low little light 

Of the candle shone through the open door, 65 
And over the hay-stack's pointed top. 
All of a tremble and ready to drop, 

The first half-hour, the great yellow star, 

That we, with staring, ignorant eyes. 
Had often and often watched to see 70 

Propped and held in its place in the skies 
By the fork of a tall red mulberry-tree. 

Which close in the edge of our flax-field grew, — 
Dead at the top, — just one branch full 
Of leaves, notched round, and lined with wool, 75 

From which it tenderly shook the dew 
Over our heads, when we came to play 
In its hand-breadth of shadow, day after day. 

Afraid to go home, sir ; for one of us bore 






ILLINOIS COURSE— FIFTH YEAR 65 

A nest full of speckled and tliin-slielled eggs, — 80 

The other, a bird, held fast by the legs, 

Not so big as a straw of wheat : 

The berries we gave her she would n't eat, 

But cried and cried, till we held her bill, 

So slim and shining, to keep her still, 85 

At last we stood at our mother's knee. 

Do you think, sir, if you try. 

You can paint the look of a lie ? 

If you can, pray have the grace 

To put it solely in the face 90 

Of the urchin that is likest me : 

I think 't was solely mine, indeed : 

But that 's no matter, — paint it so ; 

The eyes of our mother — (take good heed) — 
Looking not on the nestful of eggs, 95 

Nor the fluttering bird, held so fast by the legs, 
But straight through our faces down to our lies. 
And, oh, with such injured, reproachful surprise ! 

I felt my heart bleed where that glance went, as 
though 

A sharp blade struck through it. 

You, sir, know 100 
That you on the canvas are to repeat 
Things that are fairest, thmgs most sweet, — 
Woods and corn fields and mulberry-tree, — 
The mother, — the lads, with their bird, at her knee : 

But, oh, that look of reproachful woe ! 105 

High as the heavens your name I '11 shout, 
If you paint me the picture, and leave that out. 



66 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

THE FOUNTAIN 

James Russell Lowell 

Into the sunshine, 

Full of the light, 
Leaping and flashing 

From morn tiU night ; 

Into the moonlight, 5 

Whiter than snow, 
Waving so flower-like 

When the winds blow ; 

Into the starlight 

Rushing in spray, 10 

Happy at midnight, 

Happy by day ; 

Ever in motion, 

Blithesome and cheery. 
Still climbing heavenward, 15 

Never aweary ; 

Glad of all weathers, 

StiU seeming best. 
Upward or downward. 

Motion thy rest ; 20 

Full of a nature 

Nothing can tame, 
Changed every moment, 

Ever the same ; 



ILLINOIS COURSE — FIFTH YEAR 67 

Ceaseless aspiring, 25 

Ceaseless content, 
Darkness or sunshine 

Thy element ; 

Glorious fountain, 

Let my heart be 30 

Fresh, changeful, constant. 

Upward, like thee ! 



SHERIDAN'S RIDE 

Thomas Buchanak Read 

Up from the South at break of day. 
Bringing from Winchester fresh dismay. 
The affrighted air with a shudder bore, 
Like a herald in haste, to the chieftain's door, 
The terrible grumble, and rumble, and roar, 5 
TeUing the battle was on once more, 
And Sheridan twenty miles away. 

And wider stiH those billows of war 

Thundered along the horizon's bar ; 

And louder yet into Winchester rolled 10 

The roar of that red sea uncontrolled. 

Making the blood of the listener cold, 

As he thought of the stake in that fiery fray, 

And Sheridan twenty miles away. 

But there is a road from Winchester town, 15 

A good broad highway leading down ; 

And there, through the flush of the morning light, 



68 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

A steed as black as the steeds of night 

Was seen to pass, as with eagle flight, 

As if he knew the terrible need ; 20 

He stretched away with the utmost speed ; 

Hills rose and fell ; but his heart was gay, 

With Sheridan fifteen miles away. 

Still sprung from those swift hoofs, thundering South, 
The dust, like smoke from the cannon's mouth ; 25 
Or the tail of a comet, sweeping faster and faster, 
Foreboding: to traitors the doom of disaster. 
The heart of the steed and the heart of the master 
Were beating like prisoners assaulting their walls. 
Impatient to be where the battle-field calls ; 30 

Every nerve of the charger was strained to full play, 
With Sheridan only ten miles away. 

Under his spurning feet the road 

Like an arrowy Alpine river flowed. 

And the landscape flowed away beliind 35 

Like an ocean flying before the wind. 

And the steed, like a bark fed with furnace ire, 

Swept on, with his wild eye full of fire. 

But lo ! he is nearing his heart's desire ; 

He is snuffing the smoke of the roaring fray, 40 

With Sheridan only five miles away. 

The first that the General saw were the groups 
Of stragglers, and then the retreating troops, 
What was done ? what to do ? a glance told him both. 
Then striking his spurs, with a terrible oath, 45 

He dashed down the line, 'mid a storm of huzzas. 
And the wave of retreat checked its course there, 
because 



ILLINOIS COURSE— FIFTH YEAR 



69 



The sight of the master compelled it to pause. 
With foam and with dust, the black charger was 

gray; 
By the flash of his eye, and the red nostril s play, 50 
He seemed to the whole great army to say, 
" I have brought you Sheridan all the way 
From Winchester, down to save the day ! " 

Hurrah ! hurrah for Sheridan ! 
Hurrah ! hurrah for horse and man ! 55 

And when their statues are placed on high, 
Under the dome of the Union sky, 
The American soldiers' Temple of Fame, 
There with the glorious General's name, 
Be it said, in letters both bold and bright, 60 

" Here is the steed that saved the day, 
By carrying Sheridan into the fight. 
From Winchester, twenty miles away ! " 



THE LANDING OF THE PILGRIM FATHERS 
IN NEW ENGLAND 

Felicia D. Hemans 

The breaking waves dashed high 
On a stern and rockbound coast. 

And the woods against a stormy sky 
Their giant branches tossed. 

And the heavy night hung dark 5 

The hiUs and water o'er. 
When a band of exiles moored their bark 

On the wild New England shore. 



70 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

Not as the conqueror comes, 

They, the true-hearted, came ; 10 

Not with the roll of the stirring drums, 

And the trumpet that sings of fame. 

Not as the flying come. 

In silence and in fear ; — 
They shook the depths of the desert gloom 15 

With their hymns of lofty cheer. 

Amidst the storm they sang. 

And the stars heard, and the sea : 

And the sounding aisles of the dim woods rang 
To the anthem of the free ! 20 

The ocean eagle soared 

From his nest by the white wave's foam : 
And the rocking pines of the forest roared, — 

This was their welcome home ! 

There were men with hoary hair 25 

Amidst that pilgrim band : — 
Why had they come to wither there. 

Away from their childhood's land? 

There was woman's fearless eye, 

Lit by her deep love's truth ; 30 

There was manhood's brow serenely high. 

And the fiery heart of youth. 

What sought they thus afar ? 

Bright jewels of the mine? 
The wealth of seas, the spoils of war ? 35 

They sought a faith's pure shrine ! 



ILLINOIS COURSE— FIFTH YEAR 71 

Ay, call it holy ground, 

The soil where first they trod : 
They have left unstained what there they found, — 

Freedom to worship God. 40 

THE HUNDREDTH PSALM 

Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands. 

Serve the Lord with gladness : come before his pre- 
sence with singing. 

Know ye that the Lord he is God : it is he that 
hath made us, and not we ourselves ; we are his people, 
and the sheep of his pasture. 

Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his 
courts with praise : be thankful unto him, and bless 
his name. 

For the Lord is good : his mercy is everlasting ; and 
his truth endureth to all generations. 

CHRISTMAS BELLS 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 

1 HEARD the bells on Christmas Day 
Their old, familiar carols play. 

And wild and sweet 

The words repeat 
Of peace on earth, good-will to men ! 5 

And thought how, as the day had come, 
The belfries of all Christendom 

Had rolled along 

The unbroken song 
Of peace on earth, good- will to men ! 10 



72 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

Till, ringing, singing on its way. 

The world revolved from night to day, 

A voice, a chime, 

A chant sublime 
Of peace on earth, good- will to men ! 15 

Then from each black, accursed mouth 
The cannon thundered in the South, 

And with the sound 

The carols drowned 
Of peace on earth, good-will to men ! 20 

It was as if an earthquake rent 
The hearth-stones of a continent, 

And made forlorn 

The households born 
Of peace on earth, good-will to men ! 25 

And in despair I bowed my head ; 
" There is no peace on earth," I said ; 
" For hate is strong. 
And mocks the song 
Of peace on earth, good-will to men ! " 30 

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep : 
" God is not dead ; nor doth he sleep ! 

The Wrong shall fail, 

The Right prevail. 
With peace on earth, good-will to men ! " 35 



ILLINOIS COURSE— FIFTH YEAR 73 

LITTLE GOTTLIEB 

, A CHRISTMAS STORY 
Phcebe Gary 

Across the German Ocean, 

In a country far from our own, 
Once, a poor little boy, named Gottlieb, 

Lived with his mother alone. 

They dwelt in the part of a village 5 

Where the houses were poor and small. 

But the home of little Gottlieb 
Was the poorest one of all. 

He was not large enough to work, 

And his mother could do no more 10 

(Though she scarcely laid her knitting down) 

Than keep the wolf from the door. 

She had to take their threadbare clothes. 

And turn, and patch, and darn ; 
For never any women yet 15 

Grew rich by knitting yarn. 

And oft at night, beside her chair, 

Would Gottlieb sit, and plan 
The wonderful things he would do for her, 

When he grew to be a man. 20 



74 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

One night she sat and knitted, 
And Gottlieb sat and dreamed, 

When a happy fancy all at once 
Upon his vision beamed. 

'T was only a week till Christmas, 25 

And Gottlieb knew that then 
The Christ-child, who was born that day, 

Sent down good gifts to men. 

But he said, " He will never find us, 

Our home is so mean and small, 30 

And we, who have most need of them. 
Will get no gifts at all." 

When all at once a happy light 

Came into his eyes so blue. 
And lighted up his face with smiles, 35 

As he thought what he could do. 

Next day when the postman's letters 

Came from all over the land ; 
Came one for the Christ-child, written 

In a child's poor trembling hand. 40 

You may think he was sorely puzzled 

What in the world to do ; 
So he went to the Burgomaster, 

As the wisest man he knew. 

And when they opened the letter, 45 

They stood almost dismayed 
That such a little child should dare 

To ask the Lord for aid. 



ILLINOIS COURSE — FIFTH YEAR 75 

Then the Burgomaster stammered, 

And scarce knew what to speak, 50 

And hastily he brushed aside 

A drop, like a tear, from his cheek. 

Then up he spoke right gruffly, 
And he turned himself about : 
" This must be a very foolish boy, 55 

And a small one, too, no doubt." 

But when six rosy children 

That night about him pressed, 
Poor, trusting little Gottlieb 

Stood near him, with the rest. 60 

And he heard his simple, touching prayer, 

Through all their noisy play ; 
Though he tried his very best to put 

The thought of him away. 

A wise and learned man was he, 65 

Men called him good and just ; 
But his wisdom seemed like foolishness, 

By that weak child's simple trust. 

Now when the morn of Christmas came. 

And the long, long week was done, 70 

Poor Gottlieb, who scarce could sleep. 
Rose up before the sun. 

And hastened to his mother. 

But he scarce might speak for fear. 

When he saw her wondering look, and saw 75 
The Burgomaster near. 



76 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

He was n't afraid of the Holy Babe, 

Nor his mother, meek and mild ; 
But he felt as if so great a man 

Had never been a child. 80 

Amazed the poor child looked, to find 

The hearth was piled with wood. 
And the table, never full before. 

Was heaped with dainty food. 

Then haK to hide from himself the truth 85 

The Burgomaster said, 
While the mother blessed him on her knees. 

And Gottlieb shook for dread ; 

" Nay, give no thanks, my good dame, 

To such as me for aid, 90 

Be grateful to your little son, 

And the Lord to whom he prayed ! " 

Then turning round to Gottlieb, 

" Your written prayer, you see, 
Came not to whom it was addressed, 95 

It only came to me ! 

" 'T was but a foolish thing you did, 
As you must understand ; 
For though the gifts are yours, you know. 

You have them from my hand." 100 

Then Gottlieb answered fearlessly, 
Where he humbly stood apart, 
" But the Christ-child sent them all the same, 
He put the thought in your heart ! " 



ILLINOIS COURSE — FIFTH YEAR 77 

THE HERITAGE 

James Russell Lowell 

The rich man's son inherits lands, 

And piles of brick and stone, and gold, 

And he inherits soft white hands, 
And tender flesh that fears the cold. 
Nor dares to wear a garment old ; 5 

A heritage, it seems to me. 

One scarce would wish to hold in fee. 

The rich man's son inherits cares ; 

The bank may break, the factory burn, 
A breath may burst his bubble shares, 10 

And soft white hands could hardly earn 

A living that would serve his turn ; 
A heritage, it seems to me. 
One scarce would wish to hold in fee. 

i 
The rich man's son inherits wants, 15 

His stomach craves for dainty fare ; 
With sated heart, he hears the pants 

Of toiling hinds with brown arms bare, 

And wearies in his easy -chair ; 
A heritage, it seems to me, 20 

One scarce would wish to hold in fee. 

What doth the poor man's son inherit ? 

Stout muscles and a sinewy heart, 
A hardy frame, a hardier spirit ; 

King of two hands, he does his part 25 

In every useful toil and art ; 



78 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

A heritage, it seems to me, 

A king might wish to hold in fee. 

What doth the poor man's son inherit? 

Wishes o'erjoyed with humble things, 30 

A rank adjudged by toil-won merit. 

Content that from employment springs, 
A heart that in his labor sings ; 

A heritage, it seems to me, 

A king might wish to hold in fee. 35 

What doth the poor man's son inherit? 

A patience learned of being poor. 
Courage, if sorrow come, to bear it, 

A fellow-feeling that is sure 

To make the outcast bless his door ; 40 

A heritage, it seems to me, 
A king might wish to hold in fee. 

O rich man's son ! there is a toil 
That with all others level stands ; 

Large charity doth never soil, 45 

But only whiten, soft white hands ; 
This is the best crop from thy lands, 

A heritage, it seems to me. 

Worth being rich to hold in fee. 

O poor man's son ! scorn not thy state ; 50 
There is worse weariness than thine, 

In merely being rich and great ; 
Toil only gives the soul to shine. 
And makes rest fragrant and benign ; 

A heritage, it seems to me, 55 

- Worth being poor to hold in fee. 



ILLINOIS COURSE— FIFTH YEAR 79 

Both, heirs to some six feet of sod, 
Are equal in the earth at last ; 

Both, children of the same dear God, 

Prove title to your heirship vast 60 

By record of a well-filled past ; 

A heritage, it seems to me. 

Well worth a life to hold in fee. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

William Cullen Bryant 

Written by request, when the funeral procession of the martyred 
President passed through the streets of New York. 

Oh, slow to smite and swift to spare, 

Gentle and mercifid and just ! 
Who, in the fear of God, didst bear 

The sword of power, a nation's trust ! 

In sorrow by thy bier we stand, 5 

Amid the awe that hushes all, 
And speak the anguish of a land 

That shook with horror at thy fall. 

Thy task is done ; the bond are free : 

We bear thee to an honored grave, 10 

Whose proudest monument shall be 
The broken fetters of the slave. 

Pure was thy life ; its bloody close 

Hath placed thee with the sons of light. 

Among the noble host of those 15 

Who perished in the cause of Right. 



80 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

THE ARROW AND THE SONG 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 

'* October 16, 1845. Before church, wrote The Arrow and the Song. 
which came into my mind as I stood with my back to the fire, and 
glanced on to the paper with arrow's speed. Literally an improvisa- 
tion." — Diary of H. W. Longfellow. 

I SHOT an arrow into the air, 
It fell to earth, I knew not where ; 
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight 
Could not follow it in its flight. 

I breathed a song into the air, 5 

It fell to earth, I knew not where ; 
For who has sight so keen and strong, 
That it can follow the flight of song? 

Long, long afterwards, in an oak 

I found the arrow, still unbroke ; 10 

And the song, from beginning to end, 

I found again in the heart of a friend. 

THE BUILDERS 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 

All are architects of Fate, 

Working in these walls of Time ; 

Some with massive deeds and great. 
Some with ornaments of rhyme. 



ILLINOIS COURSE— FIFTH YEAR 81 

Nothing useless is, or low ; 5 

Each thing in its place is best ; 
And what seems but idle show 

Strengthens and supports the rest. 

For the structure that we raise, 

Time is with materials filled ; 10 

Our to-days and yesterdays 

Are the blocks with which we build. 

Truly shape and fashion these ; 

Leave no yawning gaps between ; 
Think not, because no man sees, 15 

Such things will remain unseen. 

In the elder days of Art, 

Builders wrought with greatest care 
Each minute and unseen part ; 

For the Gods see everywhere. 20 

Let us do our work as well. 

Both the unseen and the seen ; 
Make the house, w^here Gods may dwell. 

Beautiful, entire, and clean. 

Else our lives are incomplete, 25 

Standing in these walls of Time, 

Broken stairways, where the feet 
Stumble as they seek to climb. 

Build to-day, then, strong and sure. 

With a firm and ample base ; 30 

And ascending and secure 

Shall to-morrow find its place. 



82 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

Thus alone can we attain 

To those turrets, where the eye 

Sees the world as one vast plain, 35 

And one boundless reach of sky. 



PLANT A TREE 

Lucy Larcom 

He who plants a tree, 
Plants a hope. 
Rootlets up through fibres blindly grope ; 
Leaves unfold into horizons free. 

So man's life must climb ^ 

From the clods of time 

Unto heavens sublime. 
Canst thou prophesy, thou little tree. 
What the glory of thy boughs shall be ? 

He who plants a tree, 10 

Plants a joy ; 
Plants a comfort that will never cloy ; 
Every day a fresh reality. 

Beautiful and strong, 

To whose shelter throng 15 

Creatures blithe with song. 
If thou couldst but know, thou happy tree, 
Of the bliss that shall inhabit thee ! 

He who plants a tree, — 

He plants peace. 20 

Under its green curtains jargons cease. 
Leaf and zephyr murmur soothingly ; 



ILLINOIS COURSE — FIFTH YEAR 83 

Shadows soft with sleep 

Down tired eyelids creep, 

Balm of slumber deep. 25 

Never hast thou dreauied, thou blessed tree, 
Of the benediction thou shalt be. 

He who plants a tree, — 
He plants youth ; 
Vigor won for centuries in sooth ; 30 

Life of time, that hints eternity ! 

Boughs their strength uprear ; 

New shoots, every year, 

On old growths apjjear : 
Thou shalt teach the ages, sturdy tree, 35 

Youth of soul is immortality. 

He who plants a tree, — 
He plants love ; 
Tents of coolness spreading out above 
Wayfarers, he may not live to see. 40 

Gifts that grow are best ; 

Hands that bless are blest ; 

Plant ! life does the rest ! 
Heaven and earth help him who plants a tree. 
And his work its own reward shall be. 45 



SPRING 

(Translated from the French of Charles D'Orleans) 
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 

Gentle Spring ! in sunshine clad, 

Well dost thou thy power display ! 
For Winter maketh the light heart sad, 



84 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

And thou, thou makest the sad heart gay. 
He sees thee, and calls to his gloomy train, 5 

The sleet, and the snow, and the wind, and the rain ; 
And they shrink away, and they flee in fear. 

When thy merry step draws near. 

Winter giveth the fields and the trees, so old. 

Their beards of icicles and snow ; 10 

And the rain, it raineth so fast and cold. 
We must cower over the embers low ; 

And, snugly housed from the wind and weather, 

Mope like birds that are changing feather. 

But the storm retires, and the sky grows clear, 15 
When thy merry step draws near. 

Winter maketh the sun in the gloomy sky 

Wrap him round with a mantle of cloud; 
But, Heaven be praised, thy step is nigh ; 

Thou tearest away the mournfid shroud, 20 

And the earth looks bright, and Winter surly. 
Who has toiled for naught both late and early, 
Is banished afar by the new-born year. 
When thy merry step draws near. 

THE DAFFODILS 

William Wordsworth 

I WANDERED lonely as a cloud 

That floats on high o'er vales and hills, 

When all at once I saw a crowd, 

A host, of golden daffodils ; 

Beside the lake, beneath the trees, 5 

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. 



ILLINOIS COURSE — FIFTH YEAR 85 

Continuous as the stars that shine 

And twinkle on the milky way, 

They stretched in never-ending line 

Along the margin of a bay : 10 

Ten thousand saw I at a glance, 

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. 

The waves beside them danced ; but they 

Outdid the sparkling waves in glee ; 

A poet could not but be gay, 15 

In such a jocund company ; 

I gazed, — and gazed, — but little thought 

What wealth the show to me had brought : 

For oft, when on my couch I lie 

In vacant or in pensive mood, 20 

They flash upon that inward eye 

Which is the bliss of solitude ; 

And then my heart with pleasure fills, 

And dances with the daffodils. 

JUNE 

(From " The Vision of Sir Launfal ") 
Jambs Russell Lowell 

And what is so rare as a day in June ? 

Then, if ever, come perfect days ; 
Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune, 

And over it softly her warm ear lays : 
Whether we look, or whether we listen, 5 

We hear life murmur, or see it glisten ; 
Every clod feels a stir of might, 



86 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

An instinct within it that reaches and towers, 
And, groping blindly above it for light, 

Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers; 10 

The flush of life may well be seen 

Thrilling back over hills and valleys ; 
The cowslip startles in meadows green. 

The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice. 
And there 's never a leaf nor a blade too mean 15 

To be some happy creature's palace ; 
The little bird sits at his door in the sun, 

Atilt like a blossom among the leaves. 
And lets his illumined being o'errun 

With the deluge of summer it receives ; 20 

His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings, 
And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings ; 
He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest, — 
In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best ? 

Now is the high-tide of the year, 25 

And whatever of life hath ebbed away 
Comes flooding back with a ripply cheer. 

Into every bare inlet and creek and bay ; 
Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it, 
We are happy now because God wills it ; 30 

No matter how barren the past may have been, 
'T is enough for us now that the leaves are green ; 
We sit in the warm shade and feel right well 
How the sap creeps up and the blossoms swell ; 
We may shut our eyes, but we cannot help knowing 35 
That skies are clear and grass is growing ; 

The breeze comes whispering in our ear 
That dandelions are blossoming near. 

That maize has sprouted, that streams are flowing, 



ILLINOIS COURSE — FIFTH YEAR 87 

That the river is bluer than the sky, 40 

That the robin is plastering his house hard by ; 
And if the breeze kept the good news back, 
For other couriers we should not lack ; 

We could guess it all by yon heifer's lowing, — 
And hark ! how clear bold chanticleer, 45 

Warmed with the new wine of the year, 

Tells all in his lusty crowing ! 

Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how ; 

Everything is happy now, i 

Everything is upward striving ; 50 

'T is as easy now for the heart to be true 
As for grass to be green or skies to be blue, — 

'T is the natural way of living : 
Who knows whither the clouds have fled ? 

In the unscarred heaven they leave no wake ; 55 
And the eyes forget the tears they have shed, 

The heart forgets its sorrow and ache ; 
The soul partakes the season's youth. 

And the sulphurous rifts of passion and woe 
Lie deep 'neath a silence pure and smooth, 60 

Like burnt-out craters healed with snow. 
What wonder if Sir Launfal now 
Remembered the keeping of his vow ? 



SIXTH YEAR 

THE GRAY SWAN 

Alice Gary 

" Oh ! tell me, sailor, tell me true, 
Is my little lad, my Elihu, 

A-sailing with your ship ? " 
The sailor's eyes were dim with dew, 
" Your little lad, your Elihu ? " 

He said mth trembling lip, — 
" What little lad ? What ship 



? " 



*' What little lad ? as if there could be 
Another such a one as he ! 

What little lad, do you say ? lo 

Why, Elihu, that took to the sea 
The moment I put him off my knee ! 
It was just the other day 
The Gray Swan sailed away ! " 

" The other day ? " The sailor's eyes 15 

Stood open with a great surprise : — 

" The other day ? — the Swan, f " 
His heart began in his throat to rise. 
" Ay, ay, sir ! here in the cupboard lies 

The jacket he had on ! " — 20 

" And so your lad is gone ? " 



ILLINOIS COURSE — SIXTH YEAR ' 89 

" Gone with the Swan.''' " And did she stand 
With her anchor clutching hold of the sand, 
For a month, and never stir ? " 
" Why, to be sure ! I 've seen from the land, 25 
Like a lover kissing his lady's hand. 
The wild sea kissing her, — 
A sight to remember, sir ! " 

" But, my good mother, do you know 

All this was twenty years ago ? 30 

I stood on the Gray S2va7i's deck. 

And to that lad I saw you throw, 

Taking it off, as it might be, so ! 

The kerchief from your neck." — 

" Ay, and he '11 bring it back ! " 35 

" And did the little lawless lad. 
That has made you sick and made you sad, 
Sail with the Gray Simn's crew ? " 
" Lawless 1 The man is going mad ! 
The best boy ever mother had : — 40 

Be sure he sailed with the crew ! 
What would you have him do ? " 

" And he has never written line. 
Nor sent you word, nor made you sign, 

To say he was alive ? " 45 

" Hold ! if 't was wrong, the wrong is mine ; 
Besides, he may be in the brine ; 

And could he write from the grave ? 
Tut, man ! What would you have ? " 

" Gone, twenty years, — a long, long cruise, 50 
'T was wicked thus your love to abuse ! 



90 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

But if the lad still live, 
And come back home, think you, you can 
Forgive him ? " — " Miserable man ! 

You 're mad as the sea, — you rave — 55 

What have I to forgive ? " 

The sailor twitched his shirt so blue. 
And from witliin his bosom drew 

The kerchief. She was wild. 
" O God, my Father ! is it true ? 60 

My little lad, my Elihu ! 

My blessed boy, my child ! 

My dead, my living child ! " 



RAIN IN SUMMER 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 

How beautiful is the rain ! 

After the dust and heat, 

In the broad and fiery street. 

In the narrow lane. 

How beautiful is the rain ! 5 

How it clatters along the roofs, 

Like the tramp of hoofs ! 

How it gushes and struggles out 

From the throat of the overflowing spout ! 

Across the window-pane 10 

It pours and pours ; 
And swift and wide, 
With a muddy tide, 



ILLINOIS COURSE— SIXTH YEAR 91 

Like a river down the gutter roars 

The rain, the welcome rain ! 15 

The sick man from his chamber looks 

At the twisted brooks ; 

He can feel the cool 

Breath of each little pool ; 

His fevered brain 20 

Grows calm again, 

And he breathes a blessing on the rain. 

From the neighboring school 

Come the boys. 

With more than their wonted noise 25 

And commotion ; 

And down the wet streets 

Sail their mimic fleets, 

Till the treacherous pool 

Ingulfs them in its whirling 30 

And turbulent ocean. 

In the country, on every side, 

Where far and wide, 

Like a leopard's tawny and spotted hide. 

Stretches the plain, 35 

To the dry grass and the drier grain 

How welcome is the rain ! 

/ 
In the furrowed land 
The toilsome and patient oxen stand ; 
Lifting the yoke-encumbered head, 40 

With their dilated nostrils spread, 
They silently inhale 



92 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

The clover-scented gale, 

And the vapors that arise 

From the well-watered and smoking soil. 45 

For this rest in the furrow after toil 

Their large and lustrous eyes 

Seem to thank the Lord, 

More than man's spoken word. 

Near at hand, 50 

From under the sheltering trees. 

The farmer sees 

His pastures, and his fields of grain, 

As they bend their tops 

To the numberless beating drops 55 

Of the incessant rain. 

He counts it as no sin 

That he sees therein 

Only his own thrift and gain. 

These, and far more than these, 60 

The Poet sees ! 

He can behold 

Aquarius old 

Walking the fenceless fields of air ; 

And from each ample fold 65 

Of the clouds about him rolled 

Scattering everywhere 

The showery rain. 

As the farmer scatters his grain. 

He can behold 70 

Things manifold 

That have not yet been wholly told, — 



ILLINOIS COURSE^ SIXTH YEAR 93 

Have not been wholly sung nor said. 

For his thought, that never stops, 

Follows the water-drops 75 

Down to the graves of the dead, 

Down through chasms and gulfs profound, 

To the dreary foimtain-head 

Of lakes and rivers under ground ; 

And sees them, when the rain is done, 80 

On the bridge of colors seven 

Climbing up once more to heaven, 

Opposite the setting sun. 

Thus the Seer, 

With vision clear, 85 

Sees forms appear and disappear, 

In the perpetual round of strange, 

Mysterious change 

From birth to death, from death to birth, 

From earth to heaven, from heaven to earth ; 90 

Till glimpses more sublime 

Of things, unseen before, 

Unto his wondering eyes reveal 

The Universe, as an immeasurable wheel 

Turning forevermore 95 

In the rapid and rushing river of Time. 



THE HARVEST MOON 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 

It is the Harvest Moon ! On gilded vanes 
And roofs of villages, on woodland crests 
And their aerial neighborhoods of nests 



94 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

Deserted, on the curtained window-panes 
Of rooms where children sleep, on country lanes 5 

And harvest-fields, its mystic splendor rests ! 

Gone are the birds that were our summer guests ; 

With the last sheaves return the laboring wains ! 
All things are symbols : the external shows 

Of Nature have their image in the mind, 10 

As flowers and fruits and falling of the leaves ; 
The song-birds leave us at the summer's close. 

Only the empty nests are left behind, 

And pipings of the quail among the sheaves 



MAIZE, THE NATION'S EMBLEM 

Celia Thaxteb 

Upon a hundred thousand plains 

Its banners rustle in the breeze. 
O'er all the nation's wide domains 

From coast to coast betwixt the seas. 

It storms the hills and fills the vales, 5 

It marches like an army grand. 
The continent its presence hails. 

Its beauty brightens all the land. 

Far back through history's shadowy page 
It shines, a power of boundless good, 10 

The people's prop from age to age. 
The one unfailing wealth of food. 



ILLINOIS COURSE — SIXTH YEAR 95 

God's gift to the New World's great need 
That helped to build the nation's strength, 

Up through beginnings rude to lead 15 

A higher race of men at length. 

How straight and tall and stately stand 
Its serried stalks upright and strong! 

How nobly are its outlines planned, 

What grace and charm to it belong ! 20 

What splendor in its rustling leaves ! 

What richness in its close-set gold ! 
What largess in its clustered sheaves, 

New every year, though ages old ! 

America, from thy broad breast 25 

It sprang, beneficent and bright. 
Of all thy gifts from heaven the best. 

For the world's succor and delight. 

Then do it honor, give it praise ! 

A noble emblem should be ours ; — 30 

Upon thy fair shield set thy Maize, 

More glorious than a myriad flowers. 

And let thy States their garland bring. 

Each its own lovely blossom-sign. 
But leading all let Maize be king, 35 

Holding its place by right divine. 



96 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 
THE LEAK IN THE DIKE 

A STORY OF HOLLAND 
Phcebe Gary 

The good dame looked from her cottage 

At the close of the pleasant day, 
And cheerily called to her little son 

Outside the door at play : 
" Come, Peter, come ! I want you to go, 5 

While there is Hght to see. 
To the hut of the blind old man who lives 

Across the dike, for me ; 
And take these cakes I made for him — 

They are hot and smoking yet ; 10 

You have time enough to go and come 

Before the sun is set." 

Then the good-wife turned to her labor 

Humming a simple song, 
And thought of her husband, working hard 15 

At the sluices all day long ; 
And set the turf a-blazing. 

And brought the coarse black bread ; 
That he might find a fire at night. 

And find the table spread. 20 

And Peter left the brother, 

With whom all day he had played, 

And the sister who had watched their sports 
In the willow's tender shade ; 

And told them they 'd see him back before 25 



ILLINOIS COURSE — SIXTH YEAR 97 

They saw a star in sight, 
Though he would n't be afraid to go 

In the very darkest night ! 
For he was a brave, bright fellow, 

With eye and conscience clear ; 30 

He could do whatever a boy might do, 

And he had not learned to fear. 
Why, he would n't have robbed a bird's nest, 

Nor brought a stork to harm. 
Though never a law in Holland 35 

Had stood to stay his arm ! 

And now, with his face all glowing, 

And eyes as bright as the day 
With the thoughts of his pleasant errand, 

He trudged along the way ; 40 

And soon his joyous prattle 

Made glad a lonesome place — 
Alas ! if only the blind old man 

Could have seen that happy face ! 
Yet he somehow caught the brightness 45 

Which his voice and presence lent ; 
And he felt the sunshine come and go 

As Peter came and went. 

And now, as the day was sinking, 

And the winds began to rise, 50 

The mother looked from her door again, 

Shading her anxious eyes ; 
And saw the shadows deepen 

And birds to their homes come back, 
But never a sign of Peter 55 

Along the level track. 



98 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

But she said : " He will come at morning, 
So I need not fret or grieve — 

Though it is n't like my boy at aU 

To stay without my leave." 60 

But where was the child delaying? 

On the homeward way was he, 
And across the dike while the sun was up 

An hour above the sea. 
He was stopping now to gather flowers, 65 

Now listening to the sound. 
As the angry waters dashed themselves 

Against their narrow bound. 
" Ah ! well for us," said Peter, 

" That the gates are good and strong, 70 
And my father tends them carefully. 

Or they would not hold you long ! 
You 're a wicked sea," said Peter ; 

" I know why you fret and chafe ; 
You would like to spoil our lands and homes ; 75 

But our sluices kee}) you safe ! " 

But hark ! Through the noise of waters 

Comes a low, clear, trickling sound ; 
And the child's face ]3ales with terror. 

And his blossoms drop to the ground. 80 
He is up the bank in a moment. 

And, stealing through the sand. 
He sees a stream not yet so large 

As his slender, childish hand. 
^Tis a leak in the dike! He is but a boy, 85 

Unused to fearful scenes ; 
But, young as he is, he has learned to know, 



ILLINOIS COURSE — SIXTH YEAR 99 

The dreadful thing that means. 
A leak in the dike ! The stoutest heart 

Grows faint that cry to hear, 90 

And the bravest man in all the land 

Turns white with mortal fear. 
For he knows the smallest leak may grow 

To a flood in a single night ; 
And he knows the strength of the cruel sea 95 

When loosed in its angry might. 

And the boy ! He has seen the danger, 

And, shouting a wild alarm. 
He forces back the weight of the sea 

With the strength of his single arm ! 100 
He listens for the joyful sound 

Of a footstep passing nigh ; 
And lays his ear to the ground, to catch 

The answer to his cry. 
And he hears the rough winds blowing, 105 

And the waters rise and fall, 
But never an answer comes to him. 

Save the echo of his call. 
He sees no hope, no succor. 

His feeble voice is lost ; 110 

Yet what shall he do but watch and wait. 

Though he perish at his post ! 

So, faintly calling and crying 

Till the sun is under the sea ; 
Crying and moaning till the stars 115 

Come out for company ; 
He thinks of his brother and sister, 

Asleep in their safe warm bed ; 

LofC. 



100 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

He thinks of his father and mother, 

Of himself as (lying — and dead ; 120 

And of how, when the night is over. 

They must come and find him at last : 

But he never thinks he can leave the place 
Where duty holds him fast. 

The good dame in the cottage 125 

Is up and astir with the light, 
For the thought of her little Peter 

Has been with her all night. 
And now she watches the pathway, 

As yester eve she had done ; 130 

But what does she see so strange and black 

Against the rising sun ? 
Her neighbors are bearing between them 

Something straight to her door ; 
Her child is coming home, but not 135 

As he ever came before ! 

" He is dead ! " she cries ; " my darling ! " 

And the startled father hears, 
And comes and looks the way she looks. 

And fears the thing she fears : 140 

Till a glad shout from the bearers 

Thrills the stricken man and wife — 
" Give thanks, for your son has saved our land. 

And God has saved his life ! " 
So, there in the morning sunshine 145 

They knelt about the boy ; 
And every head was bared and bent 

In tearful, reverent joy. 



ILLINOIS COURSE — SIXTH YEAR 101 

'T is many a year since then ; but still, 

When the sea roars like a flood, 150 

Their boys are taught what a boy can do 

Who is brave and true and good. 
For every man in that country 

Takes his son by the hand, 
And tells him of little Peter, 155 

Whose courage saved the land. 

They have many a valiant hero, 

Remembered through the years : 
But never one whose name so oft 

Is named with loving tears. 160 

And his deed shall be sung by the cradle. 

And told to the child on the knee. 
So long as the dikes of Holland 

Divide the land from the sea ! 



THE FROST SPIRIT 
John Gkeenleaf Whittieb, 

He comes, — he comes, — the Frost Spirit comes ! 

You may trace his footsteps now 
On the naked woods and the blasted fields and the 

brown hill's withered brow. 
He has smitten the leaves of the gray old trees where 

their pleasant green came forth. 
And the winds, which follow wherever he goes, have 

shaken them down to earth. 

He comes, — he comes, — the Frost Spirit comes ! 
from the frozen Labrador, 5 



102 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

From the icy bridge of the Northern seas, which the 

white bear wanders o'er, 
Where the fisherman's sail is stiff with ice, and the 

luckless forms below 
In the sunless cold of the lingering night into marble 

statues grow ! 

He comes, — he comes, — the Frosfc Spirit comes ! 

on the rushing Northern blast. 
And the dark Norwegian pines have bowed as his 

fearful breath went past. 10 

With an un scorched wing he has hurried on, where 

the fires of Hecla glow 
On the darkly beautiful sky above and the ancient ice 

below. 

He comes, — he comes, — the Frost Spirit comes ! 

and the quiet lake shall feel 
The torpid touch of his glazing breath, and ring to 

the skater's heel ; 
And the streams which danced on the broken rocks, 

or sang to the leaning grass, 15 

Shall bow again to their winter chain, and in mournful 

silence pass. 

He comes, — he comes, — the Frost Spirit comes ! 
Let us meet him as we may. 

And turn with the light of the parlor-fire his evil 
power away ; 

And gather closer the circle round, when that fire- 
light dances high, 

And laugh at the shriek of the baffled Fiend as his 
sounding wing goes by ! 20 



ILLINOIS COURSE — SIXTH YEAR 103 

CHRISTMAS EVERYWHERE 

Phillips Brooks 

Everywhere, everywhere, Christmas to-night ! 
Christmas in lands of the fir-tree and pine, 
Christmas in lands of the palm-tree and vine, 
Christmas where snow peaks stand solemn and white, 
Christmas where cornfields lie sunny and bright. 5 

Christmas where children are hopeful and gay, 
Christmas where old men are patient and gray, 
Christmas where peace, like a dove in his flight, 
Broods o'er brave men in the thick of the fight ; 
Everywhere, everywhere, Christmas to-night! 10 

For the Christ-child who comes is the Master of all ; 
No palace too great, and no cottage too small. 

CHRISTMAS TIDE 

Richard Burton 

Christmas time is a time of cold, 

Of weathers bleak and of winds a-blow ; 

Never a flower — fold on fold 

Of grace and beauty — tops the snow 

Or breaks the black and bitter mold. 5 

And yet 't is warm — for the chiU and gloom 
Glow with love and with childhood's glee ; 

And yet 't is sweet — with the rich perfume 
Of sacrifice and of charity. 

Where are flowers more fair to see ? 10 



104 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

Christmas tide, it is warm and sweet ; 
A whole world's heart at a Baby's feet ! 



CHRISTMAS 

IN MEMORIAM CVI 

Alfred, Lord Tenntson 

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky, 
The flying cloud, the frosty light : 
The year is dying in the night ; 

Ring out, wild bells, and let him die. 

Ring out the old, ring in the new, 5 

Ring, happy bells, across the snow : 
The year is going, let him go ; 

Ring out the false, ring in the true. 

Ring out the grief that saps the mind, 

For those that here we see no more ; 10 

Ring out the feud of rich and poor, 

Ring in redress to all mankind. 

Ring out a slowly dying cause. 

And ancient forms of party strife ; 

Ring in the nobler modes of life, 15 

With sweeter manners, purer laws. 

Ring out the want, the care, the sin, 
The faithless coldness of the times ; 
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes. 

But ring the fuller minstrel in. 20 



ILLINOIS COURSE — SIXTH YEAR 105 

Eing out false pride in place and blood, 

The civic slander and the spite ; 

Ring in the love of truth and right, 
Ring in the common love of good. 

Ring out old shapes of foul disease ; 25 

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold ; 
Ring out the thousand wars of old, 

Ring in the thousand years of peace. 

Ring in the valiant man and free. 

The larger heart, the kindlier hand ; 30 

Ring out the darkness of the land. 

Ring in the Christ that is to be. 



KING SOLOMON AND THE ANTS 
John Greenleaf Whittieb 

Out from Jerusalem 

The king rode wdth his great 
War chiefs and lords of state, 

And Sheba's queen with them ; 

Comely, but black withal, 5 

To whom, perchance, belongs 
That wondrous Song of songs. 

Sensuous and mystical. 

Whereto devout souls turn 

In fond, ecstatic dream, 10 

And through its earth-born theme 

The Love of loves discern. 



106 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

Proud in tlie Syrian sun, 

In gold and purple sheen, 

The dusky Ethiop queen 15 

Smiled on King Solomon. 

Wisest of men, he knew 
The languages of all 
The creatures great or small 

That trod the earth or flew. 20 

Across an ant-hill led 

The king's path, and he heard 
Its small foil:, and their word 

He thus interpreted : 

" Here comes the king men greet 25 

As wise and good and just, 
To crush us in the dust 
Under his heedless feet." 

The great king bowed his head, 

And saw the wide surprise 30 

Of the Queen of Sheba's eyes 

As he told her what they said. 

" O king! " she whispered sweet, 
" Too happy fate hajve they 
Who perish in thy way 35 

Beneath thy gracious feet ! 

" Thou of the God-lent crown, 

Shall these vile creatures dare 
Murmur against thee where 
The knees of kings kneel down ? " 40 



ILLINOIS COURSE — SIXTH YEAR 107 

" Nay," Solomon replied, 

" The wise and strong should seek 
The welfare of the weak," 
And turned his horse aside. 

His train, with quick alarm, 45 

Curved with their leader round 
The ant-hill's peopled mound. 

And left it free from harm. 

The jewelled head bent low ; 

" O king ! " she said, " henceforth 50 

The secret of thy worth 
And wisdom well I know. 

" Happy must be the State 
Whose ruler heedeth more 
The murmurs of the poor 55 

Than flatteries of the great." 



SELECTIONS FROM SNOW-BOUND 
John Greenleaf Whittier 
THE MOTHER 

Our mother, while she turned her wheel 
Or run the new-knit stocking-heel. 
Told how the Indian hordes came down 
At midnight on Cocheco town. 
And how her own great-uncle bore 
His cruel scalp-mark to fourscore. 
4. Dover in New Hampshire. 



108 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

Recalling, in her fitting phrase, 
So rich and picturesque and free, 
(The common unrhymed poetry 
Of simple life and country ways,) 10 

The story of her early days, — 
She made us welcome to her home ; 
Old hearths grew wide to give us room ; 
We stole with her a frightened look 
At the gray wizard's conjuring-book, 15 

The fame whereof went far and wide 
Through all the simple country-side ; 
We heard the hawks at twilight play. 
The boat-horn on Piscataqua, 
The loon's weird laughter far away ; 20 

We fished her little trout-brook, knew 
What flowers in wood and meadow grew. 
What sunny hillsides autumn-brown 
She climbed to shake the ripe nuts down. 
Saw where in sheltered cove and bay 25 

The ducks' black squadron anchored lay, 
And heard the wild geese calling loud 
Beneath the gray November cloud. 

THE SISTER 

As one who held herself a part 
Of all she saw, and let her heart 

Against the household bosom lean. 
Upon the motley-braided mat 
Our youngest and our dearest sat, 5 

Lifting her large, sweet, asking eyes, 

Now bathed in the unfading green 
And holy peace of Paradise. 



ILLINOIS COURSE — SIXTH YEAR 109 

Oh, looking from some heavenly hill, 

Or from the shade of saintly palms, 10 

Or silver reach of river calms, 
Do those large eyes behold me still ? 
With me one little year ago : — 
The chill weight of the winter snow 

For months upon her grave has lain ; 15 

And now, when summer south-winds blow 

And brier and harebell bloom again, 
I tread the pleasant paths we trod, 
I see the violet-spvinkled sod 
Whereon she leaned, too frail and weak, 20 
The hillside flowers she loved to seek. 
Yet following me where'er I went 
With dark eyes full of love's content. 
The birds are glad ; the brier-rose fills 
The air with sweetness ; all the hills 25 

Stretch green to June's unclouded sky ; 
But still I wait with ear and eye 
For something gone which should be nigh, 
A loss in all familiar things. 
In flower that blooms, and bird that sings. 30 
And yet, dear heart ! remembering thee, 

Am I not richer than of old ? 



THE SCHOOLMASTER 

Brisk wielder of the birch and rule. 
The master of the district school 

2. This schoolmaster was George Haskell, a native of Har- 
vard, Mass., who was a Dartmouth College student at the time 
referred to in the poem, and afterward became a physician. 
He removed to Illinois, where he was active in founding Shurt- 



110 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

Held at the fire his favored place ; 

Its warm glow lit a laughing face 

Fresh-hued and fair, w^here scarce appeared 5 

The uncertain prophecy of beard. 

He teased the mitten-blinded cat, 

Played cross-pins on my uncle's hat, 

Sang songs, and told us what befalls 

In classic Dartmouth's college halls. 10 

Born the wild Northern hills among. 

From whence his yeoman father wrung 

By patient toil subsistence scant. 

Not competence and yet not want, 

He early gained the power to pay 15 

His cheerful, self-reliant way ; 

Could doff at ease his scholar's gown 

To peddle wares from town to town ; 

Or through the long vacation's reach 

In lonely lowland districts teach, 20 

Where all the droU experience found 

At stranger hearths in boarding round, 

The moonlit skater's keen delight, 

The sleigh-drive through the frosty night. 

The rustic party, with its rough ' 25 

Accompaniment of blind-man's-buff. 

And whirling plate, and forfeits paid, 

His winter task a pastime made. 

Happy the snow-locked homes wherein 

He tuned his merry violin, 30 

leff College. Later he made his home in New Jersey, and aided 
in establishing an industrial school there and in laying out a 
model community. Till near the end of his own life Mr. 
Whittier could not recall the teacher's name, and Mr. Haskell 
seems never to have known that he was immortalized in Snow- 
Bound. 



ILLINOIS COURSE— SIXTH YEAR 111 

Or played the athlete in the barn, 

Or held the good dame's winding-yarn, 

Or mirth-provoking versions told 

Of classic legends rare and old. 

Wherein the scenes of Greece and Rome 35 

Had all the commonplace of home, 

And little seemed at best the odds 

'Twixt Yankee pedlers and old gods ; 

Where Pindus-born Arachthus took 

The guise of any grist-mill brook, 40 

And dread Olympus at his will 

Became a huckleberry hill. 



CONDUCTOR BRADLEY 

John Grebnleaf Whittieb 

Conductor Bradley, (always may his name 
Be said with reverence !) as the swift doom came, 
Smitten to death, a crushed and mangled frame. 

Sank, with the brake he grasped just where he stood 
To do the utmost that a brave man could, 5 

And die, if needful, as a true man should. 

Men stooped above him ; women dropped their tears 
On that poor wreck beyond all hopes or fears, 
Lost in the strength and glory of his years. 

39. Pindus is the mountain chain which, running from north 
to south, nearly bisects Greece. Five rivers take their rise from 
the central peak, the Aous, the Arachthus, the Haliacmon, the 
Peneus, and the Achelous. 

1. A railway conductor who lost his life in an accident on a 
Connecticut railway, May 9, 1873. 



112 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

What heard they ? Lo ! the ghastly lips of pain, 
Dead to aU thought save duty's, moved again : 11 
" Put out the signals for the other train ! " 

No nobler utterance since the world began 

From lips of saint or martyr ever ran, 

Electric, through the sympathies of man. 15 

Ah me ! how poor and noteless seem to this 
The sick-bed dramas of self -consciousness. 
Our sensual fears of pain and hopes of bliss ! 

Oh, grand, supreme endeavor ! Not in vain 

That last brave act of failing tongue and brain ! 20 

Freighted with life the downward rushing train, 

Following the wrecked one, as wave follows wave, 
Obeyed the warning which the dead lips gave. 
Others he saved, himself he could not save. 

Nay, the lost life was saved. He is not dead 25 
Who in his record still the earth shall tread 
With God's clear aureole shining round his head. 

We bow as in the dust, with all our pride 

Of virtue dwarfed the noble deed beside. 

God give us grace to live as Bradley died ! 30 



ILLINOIS COURSE — SIXTH YEAR 113 

CONCORD HYMN 

Ralph Waldo Emerson 

SUNG AT THE COMPLETION OF THE BATTLE MONUMENT, 
APKIL 19, 1836 

By the rude bridge that arched the flood, 
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, 

Here once the embattled farmers stood, 
And fired the shot heard round the world. 

The foe long since in silence slept ; 5 

Alike the conqueror silent sleeps ; 
And Time the ruined bridge has swept 

Down the dark stream which seaward creeps. 

On the green bank, by this soft stream, 

We set to-day a votive stone ; 10 

That memory may their deed redeem, 
When, like our sires, our sons are gone. 

Spirit, that made those heroes dare 
To die, and leave their children free, 

Bid Time and Nature gently spare 15 

The shaft we raise to them and thee. 

3. Does this shaft mark the spot where the farmers stood, or 
where the British fell ? Read Emerson's brief Address at the 
Hundredth Anniversary of the Concord Fight, April 19, 1875, the 
last piece written out with his own hand. {Cooke, 182.) 



114 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

THE FLOWER OF LIBERTY 

Olivek Wendell Holmes 

What flower is this that greets the morn, 

Its hues from Heaven so freshly born ? 

With burning star and flaming band 

It kindles all the sunset land : 

Oh tell us what its name may be, — 5 

Is this the Flower of Liberty ? 

It is the banner of the free. 

The starry Flower of Liberty ! 

In savage Nature's far abode 

Its tender seed our fathers sowed ; 10 

The storm-winds rocked its swelling bud, 

Its opening leaves were streaked with blood, 

Till lo ! earth's tyrants shook to see 

The full-blown Flower of Liberty ! 

Then hail the banner of the free, 15 

The starry Flower of Liberty ! 

Behold its streaming rays unite. 

One mingling flood of braided light, — 

The red that fires the Southern rose, 

With spotless white from Northern snows, 20 

And, spangled o'er its azure, see 

The sister Stars of Liberty ! 

Then hail the banner of the free, 

The starry Flower of Liberty ! 

The blades of heroes fence it round, 25 

Where'er it springs is holy ground ; 



\ 

ILLINOIS COURSE — SIXTH YEAR 115 

From tower and dome its glories spread ; 

It waves where lonely sentries tread ; 

It makes the land as ocean free, 

And plants an empire on the sea ! 30 

Then hail the banner of the free, 

The starry Flower of Liberty ! 

Thy sacred leaves, fair Freedom's flower, 
Shall ever float on dome and tower. 
To all their heavenly colors true, 35 

In blackening frost or crimson dew, — 
And God love us as we love thee. 
Thrice holy Flower of Liberty ! 
Then hail the banner of the free, 
The starry Flowek of Liberty ! 40 



SONG OF MARION'S MEN 

William Cullen Bryant 

Our band is few but true and tried. 

Our leader frank and bold ; 
The British soldier trembles 

When Marion's name is told. 
Our fortress is the good greenwood, 5 

Our tent the cypress-tree ; 
We know the forest round us, 

As seamen know the sea. 
We know its walls of thorny vines, 

Its glades of reedy grass, 10 

4. The exploits of General Francis Marion, the famous par- 
tisan warrior of South Carolina, form an intensely interesting 
chapter in the annals of the American Revolution. 



116 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

Its safe and silent islands 
Within the dark morass. 

Woe to the English soldiery 

That little dread us near ! 
On them shall light at midnight 15 

A strange and sudden fear : 
When, waking to their tents on fire, 

They grasp their arms in vain, 
And they who stand to face us 

Are beat to earth again ; 20 

And they who fly in terror deem 

A mighty host behind, 
And hear the tramp of thousands 

Upon the hollow wind. 

Then sweet the hour that brings release 25 

From danger and from toil : 
We talk the battle over, 

And share the battle's spoil. 
The woodland rings with laugh and shout, 

As if a hunt were up, 30 

And woodland flowers are gathered 

To crown the soldier's cup. 
With merry songs we mock the wind 

That in the pine-top grieves, 
And slumber long and sweetly 35 

On beds of oaken leaves. 

Well knows the fair and friendly moon 
The band that Marion leads — 

The glitter of their rifles. 

The scampering of their steeds. 40 



ILLINOIS COURSE — SIXTH YEAR 117 

'Tis life to guide the fiery barb 

Across the moonlight plain ; 
'T is life to feel the night-wind 

That lifts the tossing mane. 
A moment in the British camp — 45 

A moment — and away 
Back to the pathless forest, 

Before the peep of day. 

Grave men there are by broad Santee, 

Grave men with hoary hairs ; 50 

Their hearts are all with Marion, 

For Marion are their prayers. 
And lovely ladies greet our band 

With kindliest welcoming. 
With smiles like those of summer, 55 

And tears like those of spring. 
For them we wear these trusty arms. 

And lay them down no more 
Till we have driven the Briton, 

Forever, from our shore. 60 



THE VOICE OF SPRING 

Felicia D. Hemans 

I COME, I come ! ye have called me long — 
I come o'er the mountains with light and song ! 
Ye may trace my step o'er the wakening earth 
By the winds which tell of the violet's birth. 
By the primrose stars in the shadowy grass. 
By the green leaves opening as I pass. 



118 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

I have breathed on the South, and the chestnut flowers 

By thousands have burst from the forest bowers, 

And the ancient graves and the fallen fanes 

Are veiled with wreaths on Italian plains ; — 10 

But it is not for me, in my hour of bloom, 

To speak of the ruin or the tomb ! 

I have looked on the hills of the stormy North, 

And the larch has hung all his tassels forth, 

The fisher is out on the sunny sea, 15 

And the reindeer bounds o'er the pastures free, 

And the pine has a fringe of softer green, 

And the moss looks bright where my foot hath been. 

I have sent through the wood-paths a glowing sigh, 
And called out each voice of the deep-blue sky ; 20 
From the night-bird's lay through the starry time, 
In the groves of the soft Hesjierian clime, 
To the swan's wild note by the Iceland lakes. 
When the dark fir branch into verdure breaks. 

From the streams and founts I have loosed the chain ; 
They are sweeping on to the silvery main, 26 

They are flashing down from the mountain brows. 
They are flinging spray o'er the forest boughs. 
They are bursting fresh from their sparry caves. 
And the earth resounds with the joy of waves ! 30 

Come forth, O ye children of gladness ! come ! 

Where the violets lie may be now your home. 

Ye of the rose lip and dew-bright eye. 

And the bounding footstep, to meet me fly I 

With the lyre, and the wreath, and the joyous lay, 35 

Come forth to the sunshine — I may not stay. 



ILLINOIS COURSE— SIXTH YEAR 119 

Away from the dwellings of careworn men, 

The waters are sparkling in grove and glen ! 

Away from the chamber and sullen hearth, 

The young leaves are dancing in breezy mirth ! 40 

Their light stems thrill to the wildwood strains, 

And youth is abroad in my green domains. 

But ye ! — ye are changed since ye met me last ! 
There is something bright from your features passed ! 
There is that come over your brow and eye 45 

Which speaks of a world where the flowers must die ! 
— Ye smile ! but your smile hath a dimness yet ; 
O, what have you looked on since last we met ? 

Ye are changed, ye are changed ! — and I see not here 
All whom I saw in the vanished year ! 50 

There were graceful heads, with their ringlets bright. 
Which tossed in the breeze with a play of light ; 
There were eyes in whose glistening laughter lay 
No faint remembrance of dull decay ! 

There were steps that flew o'er the cowslip's head, 55 

As if for a banquet all earth were spread ; 

There were voices that rang through the sapphire sky. 

And had not a sound of mortality ! 

Are they gone? is their mirth from the mountains 

passed ? 
Ye have looked on death since ye met me last ! 60 

I know whence the shadow comes o'er you now, — 
Ye have strewn the dust on the sunny brow ! 
Ye have given the lovely to Earth's embrace, — 
She hath taken the fairest of Beauty's race. 



120 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

With their laughing eyes and their festal crown : 65 
They are gone from amongst you in silence down ! 

They are gone from amongst you, the yomig and 

fair, 
Ye have lost the gleam of their shining hair ! 
But I know of a land where there falls no blight, — 
I shall find them there, with their eyes of light ! — 70 
Where Death midst the blooms of the morn may 

dwell, 
I tarry no longer, — farewell, farewell ! 

The summer is coming, on soft wings borne, — 
Ye may press the grape, ye may bind the corn ! 
For me, I depart to a brighter shore, — 75 

Ye are marked by care, ye are mine no more ; 
I go where the loved who have left you dwell. 
And the flowers are not Death's. Fare ye well, fare- 
well ! 



A LEGEND OF THE NORTHLAND 

Phcebe Gary 

Away, away in the Northland, 

Where the hours of the day are few, 

And the nights are so long in winter. 
They cannot sleep them through ; 

Where they harness the swift reindeer 
To the sledges, when it snows ; 

And the children look like bear's cubs 
Li their funny, furry clothes : 



ILLINOIS COURSE — SIXTH YEAR 121 

They tell them a curious story — 

I don't believe 't is true ; lo 

And yet you may learn a lesson 

If I tell the tale to you. 

Once, when the good Saint Peter 

Lived in the world below, 
And walked about it, preaching, 15 

Just as he did, you know ; 

He came to the door of a cottage, 

In travelling round the earth, 
Where a little woman was making cakes. 

And baking them on the hearth ; 20 

And being faint with fasting. 

For the day was almost done. 
He asked her, from her store of cakes, 

To give him a single one. 

So she made a very little cake, 25 

But as it baking lay, 
She looked at it, and thought it seemed 

Too large to give away. 

Therefore she kneaded another, 

And still a smaller one ; 30 

But it looked, when she turned it over. 

As large as the first had done. 

Then she took a tiny scrap of dough. 

And rolled and rolled it flat ; 
And baked it thin as a wafer — 35 

But she could n't part with that. 



122 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

For she said, " My cakes that seem too small 

When I eat of them myself, 
Are yet too large to give away." 

So she put them on the shelf. 40 

Then good Saint Peter grew angry. 

For he was hungry and faint ; 
And surely such a woman 

Was enough to provoke a saint. 

And he said, " You are far too selfish 45 

To dwell in a human form, 
To have both food and shelter, 

And fire to keep you warm. 

" Now, you shall build as the birds do. 

And shall get your scanty food 50 

By boring, and boring, and boring, 
All day in the hard dry wood." 

Then up she went through the chimney. 

Never speaking a word. 
And out of the top flew a woodpecker, 55 

For she was changed to a bird. 

She had a scarlet cap on her head. 

And that was left the same. 
But all the rest of her clothes were burned 

Black as a coal in the flame. 60 

And every country school-boy 

Has seen her in the wood ; 
Where she lives in the trees till this very day, 

Boring and boring- for food. 



ILLINOIS COURSE — SIXTH YEAR 123 

And this is the lesson she teaches : 65 

Live not for yourself alone, 
Lest the needs you will not pity 

Shall one day be your own. 

Give plenty of what is given to you, 

Listen to pity's call ; 70 

Don't think the little you give is great, 

And the much you get is small. 

Now, my little boy, remember that. 

And try to be kind and good, 
When you see the woodpecker's sooty dress, 75 

And see her scarlet hood. 

You mayn't be changed to a bird, though you 
live 

As selfishly as you can ; 
But you will be changed to a smaller thing — 

A mean and selfish man. 80 



THE LEGEND OF THE CROSSBILL 

(From the German of Julius Mosen) 
Henry Wadswoeth Longfellow 

On the cross the dying Saviour 
Heavenward lifts his eyehds cahn. 

Feels, but scarcely feels, a trembling 
In his pierced and bleeding palm. 



124 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

And by all the world forsaken, 5 

Sees He how with zealous care 

At the ruthless nail of iron 
A little bird is striving there. 

Stained with blood and never tiring, 

With its beak it doth not cease, 10 

From the cross 't would free the Saviour 
Its Creator's Son release. 

And the Saviour speaks in mildness : 
" Blest be thou of all the good ! 

Bear, as token of this moment, 15 

Marks of blood and holy rood ! " 

And that bird is called the crossbill ; 

Covered all with blood so clear, 
In the groves of pine it singeth 

Songs, like legends, strange to hear. 20 

TO A WATERFOWL 

William Cullen Bryant 

This poem was one of eight, namely : The Ages, To a Waterfowl, 
Version of a Fragment from Simonides, Inscription for the Entrance 
to a Wood, The Yelloiv Violet, Song, Green River, Thanatopsis, which 
formed a little collection of his poems put forth by Bryant in 1821, 
when he was in his twenty-seventh year. It marks the beginning 
of the classical period of American poetry. It was eighteen years 
later that Longfellow's Voices of the Night was published. Shelley's 
poem, To a Skylark, was written in 1820. 

Whither, midst falling dew. 
While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, 
Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue 

Thy solitary way ? 



ILLINOIS COURSE— SIXTH YEAR 125 

Vainly the fowler's eye 5 

Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, 
As, darkly seen against the crimson sky, 

Thy figure floats along. 

Seek'st thou the plashy brink 
Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide, lo 

Or where the rocking billows rise and sink 

On the chafed ocean-side ? 

7. Bryant had written : — 

" As darkly painted on the crimson sky," 

but before publishing had changed the line to its present form. 
He was at the time in frequent correspondence with Richard 
Henry Dana, father of the author of Two Years before the Mast, 
and himself a poet, and fastidious critic. Dana wrote : — 

" In that delicatest of delicate little poems, the Waterfowl, I 
am told that you have substituted some commonplace word — 
I forget it now — for ' painted.' Why ! it adorns the whole 
picture, makes complete to the mind (the poetic, susceptible 
mind, I mean) the crimson background and the darkly floating 
bird, and envelops him in an atmosphere all aglow, and rounds 
the several objects with a harmonizing whole." To this, Bryant 
replied in defence of his change : — 

" I was never satisfied with the word ' painted,' because the 
next line is : — 

' Thy figure floats along.' 
Now, from a very early period — I am not sure that it was not 
from the very time that I wrote the poem — there seemed to 
me an incongruity between the idea of a figure painted on the 
sky and a figure moving, ' floating ' across its face. If the fig- 
ure were painted, then it would be fixed. The incongruity dis- 
tressed me, and I could not be easy until I had made the change. 
I preferred a plain prosaic expression to a picturesque one which 
seemed to me false. * Painted * expresses well the depth and 
strength of color which fixed my attention when I saw the bird, 
— for the scene was founded on a real incident, — but it con- 
tradicted the motion of the winds and the progress of the bird 
through the air. So you have my defence." 



126 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

There is a Power whose care 
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast — 
The desert and illimitable air — 15 

Lone wandering, but not lost. 

All day thy wings have fanned, 
At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere, 
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land, 

Though the dark night is near. 20 

And soon that toil shall end ; 
Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest. 
And scream among thy fellows ; reeds shall bend. 

Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest. 

Thou 'rt gone, the abyss of heaven 25 

Hath swallowed up thy form ; yet, on my heart 
Deeply has sunk the lesson thou hast given. 

And shall not soon depart. 

He who, from zone to zone. 
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, 
In the long way that I must tread alone, 31 

Will lead my steps aright. 



THE RUBY-CROWNED KINGLET 
Henry van Dyke 



Where 's your kingdom, little king ? 
Where 's the land you call your own, 
Where 's your palace, and your throne ? 



ILLINOIS COURSE — SIXTH YEAR 127 

Fluttering lightly on the wing 

Through the blossom-world of May, 5 

Whither lies your royal way ? 
Where 's the realm that owns your sway, 
Little king ? 

Far to northward lies a land, 

Where the trees together stand 10 

Closer than the blades of wheat. 

When the summer is complete. 

Like a robe the forests hide 

Lonely vale and mountain side : 

Balsam, hemlock, spruce, and pine, — 15 

All those mighty trees are mine. 

There 's a river flowing free ; 

All its waves belong to me. 

There 's a lake so clear and bright 

Stars shine out of it all night, 20 

And the rowan-berries red 

Eound it like a girdle spread. 

Feasting plentiful and fine. 

Air that cheers the heart like wine, 

Royal pleasures by the score, 25 

Wait for me in Labrador. 

There I '11 build my dainty nest ; 

There I '11 fix my court and rest ; 

There from dawn to dark I '11 sing : 

Happy kingdom ! Lucky king ! 30 

II 

Back again, my little king ! 
Is your happy kingdom lost 
To that rebel knave. Jack Frost? 



128 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

Have you felt the snow-flakes sting ? 

Autumn is a rude disrober ; 35 

Houseless, homeless in October, 
Whither now ? Your plight is sober, 
Exiled king ! 

Far to southward lie the regions 

Where my loyal flower-legions 40 

Hold possession of the year. 

Filling every mouth with cheer. 

Christmas wakes the winter rose ; 

New Year daffodils unclose ; 

Yellow jasmine through the woods 45 

Runs in March with golden floods. 

Dropping from the tallest trees 

Shining streams that never freeze. 

Thither I must find my way. 

Fly by night and feed by day, — 50 

Till I see the southern moon 

Glistening on the broad lagoon, 

Where the cypress' vivid green, 

And the dark magnolia's sheen, 

Weave a shelter round my home. 55 

There the snow-storms never come : 

There the bannered mosses gray 

In the breezes gently sway, 

Hanging low on every side 

Round the covert where I hide. 60 

There I hold my winter court, 

Full of merriment and sport : 

There I take my ease and sing : 

Happy kingdom ! Lucky king ! 



ILLINOIS COURSE — SIXTH YEAR 129 

III 

Little boaster, vagrant king ! 65 

Neither north nor south is yours : 
You 've no kingdom that endures. 

Wandering every fall and spring, 

With your painted crown so slender, 
And your talk of royal splendor, 70 

Must I call you a Pretender, 
Landless king ? 

Never king by right divine 

Ruled a richer realm than mine ! 

What are lands and golden crowns, 75 

Armies, fortresses, and towns, 

Jewels, sceptres, robes, and rings, — 

What are these to song and wings ? 

Everywhere that I can fly. 

There I own the earth and sky ; 80 

Everywhere that I can sing. 

There I 'm happy as a king. 



SEVENTH YEAR 

YUSSOUF 

James Russell Lowell 

A STRANGER cauie one niglit to Yussouf's tent, 
Saying, " Behold one outcast and in dread. 
Against whose life the bow of power is bent, 
Who flies, and hath not where to lay his head ; 
I come to thee for shelter and for food, 5 

To Yussouf , called through all our tribes ' The 
Good.' " 

This tent is mine," said Yussouf, " but no more 
Than it is God's ; come in, and be at peace ; 
Freely shalt thou partake of all my store 
As I of His who buildeth over these 10 

Our tents his glorious roof of night and day, 
And at whose door none ever yet heard Nay." 

So Yussouf entertained his guest that night. 
And, waking him ere day, said : " Here is gold ; 
My swiftest horse is saddled for thy flight ; 15 

Depart before the prying day grow bold." 
As one lamp lights another, nor grows less. 
So nobleness enkindleth nobleness. 

That inward light the stranger's face made grand, 
Which shines from all self-conquest ; kneeling low, 



ILLINOIS COURSE — SEVENTH YEAR 131 

He bowed his forehead upon Yussouf's hand, 21 
Sobbing : " O Sheik, I cannot leave thee so ; 
I will repay thee ; all this thou hast done 
Unto that Ibrahim who slew thy son ! " 

Take thrice the gold," said Yussouf, "for with 

thee 
Into the desert, never to return, 26 

My one black thought shall ride away from 

me ; 
First-born, for whom by day and night I yearn, 
Balanced and just are aU of God's decrees; 
Thou art avenged, my first-born, sleep in peace ! " 30 



THE SHEPHERD OF KING ADMETUS 

James Russell Lowell 

There came a youth upon the earth, 

Some thousand years ago, 
Whose slender hands were nothing worth, 
Whether to plough, or reap, or sow. 

Upon an empty tortoise-shell 5 

He stretched some chords, and drew 
Music that made men's bosoms sweU 
Fearless, or brimmed their eyes with dew. 

Then King Admetus, one who had 

Pure taste by right divine, 10 

Decreed his singing not too bad 
To hear between the cups of wine : 



132 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

And so, well pleased with being soothed 

Into a sweet half-sleep, 
Three tunes his kingly beard he smoothed, 15 
And made him viceroy o'er his sheep. 

His words were simple words enough, 

And yet he used them so. 
That what in other mouths was rough 
In his seemed musical and low. 20 

Men called him but a shiftless youth. 

In whom no good they saw ; 
And yet, unwittingly, in truth, 
They made his careless words their law. 

They knew not how he learned at all, 25 

For idly, hour by hour. 
He sat and watched the dead leaves fall, 
Or mused upon a common flower. 

It seemed the loveliness of things 

Did teach him aU their use, 30 

For in mere weeds, and stones, and springs, 
He found a healing power profuse. 

Men granted that his speech was wise. 

But, when a glance they caught 
Of his slim grace and woman's eyes, 35 

They laughed, and called him good-for-naught. 

Yet after he was dead and gone, 

And e'en his memory dim. 
Earth seemed more sweet to live upon, 
More fuU of love, because of him. 40 



ILLINOIS COURSE — SEVENTH YEAR 133 

And day by day more holy grew 
Each spot where he had trod, 
Till after-poets only knew 
Their first-born brother as a god. 

THE HUSKERS 
John Greenleaf Whittier 

It was late in mild October, and the long autumnal 
rain 

Had left the summer harvest-fields all green with 
grass again ; 

The first sharp frosts had fallen, leaving all the wood- 
lands gay 

With the hues of summer's rainbow, or the meadow- 
flowers of May. 

Through a thin, dry mist, that morning, the sun rose 
broad and red, 5 

At first a rayless disk of fire, he brightened as he 
sped ; 

Yet, even his noontide glory fell chastened and 
subdued. 

On the cornfields and the orchards, and softly pic- 
tured wood. 

And all that quiet afternoon, slow sloping to the 

night. 
He wove with golden shuttle the haze with yellow 

light ; 10 

Slanting through the painted beeches, he glorified 

the hill ; 
And, beneath it, pond and meadow lay brighter, 

greener still. 



134 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

Aiid shouting boys in woodland haunts caught glimpses 

of that sky, 
Flecked by the many-tinted leaves, and laughed, they 

knew not why ; 
And school-girls, gay with aster-flowers, beside the 

meadow brooks, 15 

Mingled the glow of autumn with the sunshine of 

sweet looks. 

From spire and barn looked westerly the patient 

weathercocks ; 
But even the birches on the hill stood motionless as 

rocks. 
No sound was in the woodlands, save the squirrel's 

dropping shell. 
And the yellow leaves among the boughs, low rustling 

as they fell. 20 

The summer grains were harvested ; the stubble-fields 

lay dry. 
Where June winds rolled, in light and shade, the pale 

green waves of rye ; 
But still, on gentle hill-slopes, in valleys fringed with 

wood, 
Ungathered, bleaching in the sun, the heavy corn crop 

stood. 

Bent low, by autumn's wind and rain, through husks 
that, dry and sere, 25 

Unfolded from their ripened charge, shone out the 
yellow ear ; 



ILLINOIS COURSE — SEVENTH YEAR 135 

Beneath, the turnip lay concealed, m many a verdant 

fold. 
And glistened in the slanting light the pumpkin's 

sphere of gold. 

There wrought the busy harvesters ; and many a 
creaking wain 

Bore slowly to the long barn-floor its load of husk and 
grain ; 30 

Till broad and red, as when he rose, the sun sank 
down, at last. 

And like a merry guest's farewell, the day in bright- 
ness passed. 

And lo ! as through the western pines, on meadow, 

stream, and pond. 
Flamed the red radiance of a sky, set all afire beyond. 
Slowly o'er the eastern sea-bluffs a milder glory shone. 
And the sunset and the moonrise were mingled into 

one ! 36 

As thus into the quiet night the twilight lapsed away. 
And deeper in the brightening moon the tranquil 

shadows lay ; 
From many a brown old farm-house, and hamlet 

without name, 
Their milking and their home-tasks done, the merry 

buskers came. 40 

Swung o'er the heaped-up harvest, from pitchforks 

in the mow. 
Shone dimly down the lanterns on the pleasant scene 

below ; 



136 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

The growing pile of husks behind, the golden ears 

before, 
And laughing eyes and busy hands and brown 

cheeks glimmering o'er. 

Half hidden, in a quiet nook, serene of look and 
heart, 45 

Talking their old times over, the old men sat apart ; 

While up and down the unhusked pile, or nestling 
in its shade. 

At hide-and-seek, with laugh and shout, the happy 
children played. 

Urged by the good host's daughter, a maiden young 

and fair. 
Lifting to light her sweet blue eyes and pride of 

soft brown hair, 50 

The master of the village school, sleek of hair and 

smooth of tongue. 
To the quaint tune of some old psalm, a husking- 

ballad sung. 



THE GIFT OF TRITEMIUS 

John Greenleaf Whittieb 

Tkitemius of Herbipolis, one day. 

While kneeling at the altar's foot to pray. 

Alone with God, as was his pious choice. 

Heard from without a miserable voice, 

A sound which seemed of all sad things to tell, 5 

As of a lost soul crying out of hell. 



ILLINOIS COURSE — SEVENTH YEAR 137 

Thereat the Abbot paused ; tlie chain whereby 
His thoughts went upward broken by that cry ; 
And, looking from the casement, saw below 
A wretched woman, with gray hair a-flow, 10 

And withered hands held up to him, who cried 
For alms as one who might not be denied. 

She cried, " For the dear love of Him who gave 
His life for ours, my child from bondage save, — 
My beautiful, brave first-born, chained with slaves 15 
In the Moor's galley, where the sun-smit waves 
Lap the white walls of Tunis ! " — " What I can 
I give," Tritemius said, " my prayers." — " O man 
Of God ! " she cried, for grief had made her bold, 
" Mock me not thus ; I ask not prayers, but gold. 20 
Words will not serve me, alms alone suffice ; 
Even while I speak, perchance my first-born dies." 

" Woman," Tritemius answered, " from our door 
None go unfed, hence are we always poor ; 
A single soldo is our only store. 25 

Thou hast our prayers ; what can we give thee 
more ? " 

" Give me," she said, " the silver candlesticks 
On either side of the great crucifix. 
God well may spare them on His errands sped, 
Or He can give you golden ones instead." 30 

Then spake Tritemius : " Even as thy word. 
Woman, so be it ! (Our most gracious Lord, 
Who loveth mercy more than sacrifice, 
Pardon me if a human soul I prize 



138 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

Above the gifts upon liis altar piled !) 35 

Take what thou askest, and redeem thy child." 

But his hand trembled as the holy alms 

He placed within the beggar's eager palms ; 

And as she vanished down the linden shade, 

He bowed his head and for forgiveness prayed. 40 

So the day passed, and when the twilight came 
He woke to find the chapel all aflame, 
And, dumb with grateful wonder, to behold 
Upon the altar candlesticks of gold ! 

ODE RECITED AT THE HARVARD 
COMMEMORATION 

James Russell, Lowell 

[On the 21st of July, 1865, Harvard University welcomed back 
those of its students and graduates who had f oug-ht in the war for the 
Union. By exercises in the church and at the festival which followed, 
the services of the dead and the living were commemorated. It was 
on this occasion that Mr. Lowell recited the following ode.] 

I 

Weak-winged is song. 
Nor aims at that clear-ethered height 
Whither the brave deed climbs for light : 

We seem to do them wrong. 
Bringing our robin's-leaf to deck their hearse, 5 
Who in warm life-blood wrote their nobler verse, 
Our trivial song to honor those who come 
With ears attuned to strenuous trump and drum, 
And shaped in squadron-strophes their desire. 
Live battle-odes whose lines were steel and fire : 10 



ILLINOIS COURSE — SEVENTH YEAR 139 

Yet sometimes feathered words are strong, 
A gracious memory to buoy up and save 
From Lethe's dreamless ooze, the common grave 

Of the un venturous throng. 

II 
To-day our Reverend Mother welcomes back 15 

Her wisest Scholars, those who understood 
The deeper teaching of her mystic tome, 

And offered their fresh lives to make it good. 

No lore of Greece or Rome, 
No science peddling with the names of things, 20 
Or reading stars to find inglorious fates. 

Can lift our life with wings 
Far from Death's idle gulf that for the many waits, 

And leno^then out our dates 
With that clear fame whose memory sings 25 

In manly hearts to come, and nerves them and di- 
lates : 
Nor such thy teaching, Mother of us all ! 

Not such the trumpet-call 

Of thy diviner mood. 

That could thy sons entice 30 

From happy homes and toils, the fruitful nest 
Of those half -virtues which the world calls best. 

Into War's tumult rude ; 

But rather far that stern device 
The sponsors chose that round thy cradle stood 35 

In the dim, unventured wood. 

The Veritas that lurks beneath 

The letter's unprolific sheath, 

37. An early emblem of Harvard College was a shield with 
Veritas (truth) upon three open books. This device is still used. 



140 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

Life of whate'er makes life worth living, 
Seed-grain of high emprise, immortal food, 40 

One heavenly thing whereof earth hath the giving. 

Ill 

Many loved Truth, and lavished life's best oil 

Amid the dust of books to find her, 
Content at last, for guerdon of their toil. 

With the cast mantle she hath left behind her. 45 

Many in sad faith sought for her, 

Many with crossed hands sighed for her ; 

But these, our brothers, fought for her, 

At life's dear peril wrought for her. 

So loved her that they died for her, 50 

Tasting the raptured fleetness 

Of her divine completeness : 
Their higher instinct knew 
Those love her best who to themselves are true. 
And what they dare to dream of, dare to do ; 55 

They followed her and found her 

Where all may hope to find. 
Not in the ashes of the burnt-out mind. 
But beautiful, with danger's sweetness round her. 

Where faith made whole with deed 60 

Breathes its awakening breath 

Into the lifeless creed, 

They saw her plumed and mailed, 

With sweet, stern face unveiled, 
And all-repaying eyes, look proud on them in death. 

IV 

Our slender life runs rippling by, and glides 66 
Into the silent hollow of the past ; 



ILLINOIS COURSE — SEVENTH YEAR 141 

What is there that abides 
To make the next age better for the last ? 

Is earth too poor to give us 70 

Something to live for here that shall outlive us ? 
Some more substantial boon 
Than such as flows and ebbs with Fortune's fickle 
moon ? 
The little that we see 

From doubt is never free ; 75 

The little that we do 
Is but half -nobly true ; 
With our laborious hiving 
What men call treasure, and the gods call dross, 
Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving, 80 

Only secure in every one's conniving, 
A long account of nothings paid with loss, 
Where we poor puppets, jerked by unseen wires, 

After our little hour of strut and rave. 
With all our pasteboard passions and desires, 85 
Loves, hates, ambitions, and immortal fires. 
Are tossed pell-mell together in the grave. 
But stay ! no age was e'er degenerate. 
Unless men held it at too cheap a rate. 
For in our likeness still we shape our fate. 90 

Ah, there is something here 
Unfathomed by the cynic's sneer. 
Something that gives our feeble light 
A high immunity from Night, 
Something that leaps life's narrow bars 95 

To claim its birthright with the hosts of heaven ; 

A seed of sunshine that can leaven 
Our earthly dulness with the beams of stars, 
And glorify our clay 



142 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

With light from fountains elder than the Day ; 100 
A conscience more divine than we, 
A gladness fed with secret tears, 
A vexing, forward-reaching sense 
Of some more noble permanence ; 

A light across the sea, 105 

Which haunts the soul and will not let it be, 
Still glimmering from the heights of undegenerate 
years. 



Whither leads the path 

To ampler fates that leads ? 

Not down through flowery meads, 110 

To reap an aftermath 

Of youth's vainglorious weeds ; 

But up the steep, amid the wrath 
And shock of deadly-hostile creeds. 
Where the world's best hope and stay 115 

By battle's flashes gropes a desperate way, 
And every turf the fierce foot clings to bleeds. 

Peace hath her not ignoble wreath. 

Ere yet the sharp, decisive word 
Light the black lips of cannon, and the sword 120 

Dreams in its easeful sheath ; 
But some day the live coal behind the thought. 

Whether from Baal's stone obscene, 

Or from the shrine serene 

Of God's pure altar brought, 125 

Bursts up in flame ; the war of tongue and pen 
Learns with what deadly purpose it was fraught. 
And, helpless in the fiery passion caught. 
Shakes all the pillared state with shock of men : 



ILLINOIS COURSE — SEVENTH YEAR 143 

Some day the soft Ideal that we wooed 130 

Confronts us fiercely, foe-beset, pursued, 
And cries reproachful : '' Was it, then, my praise. 
And not myself was loved ? Prove now thy truth ; 
I claim of thee the promise of thy youth ; 
Give me thy life, or cower in empty phrase, 135 
The victim of thy genius, not its mate ! " 
Life may be given in many ways, 
And loyalty to Truth be sealed 
As bravely in the closet as the field, 

So boimtiful is Fate ; 140 

But then to stand beside her. 

When craven churls deride her. 
To front a lie in arms and not to yield, 

This shows, methinks, God's plan 

And measure of a stalwart man, 145 

Limbed like the old heroic breeds. 
Who stands self-poised on manhood's solid earth, 
Not forced to frame excuses for his birth. 
Fed from within with all the strength he needs. 

VI 

Such was he, our Martyr-Chief, 150 

Whom late the Nation he had led. 
With ashes on her head. 
Wept with the passion of an angry grief : 
Forgive me, if from present things I turn 
To speak what in my heart will beat and burn, 155 
And hang my wreath on his world-honored urn. 

Nature, they say, doth dote, 

And cannot make a man 

Save on some worn-out plan. 

Repeating us by rote : 160 



144 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

For him her Old-World moulds aside she threw, 
And, choosing sweet clay from the breast 
Of the unexhausted West, 
With stuff untainted shaped a hero new, 
Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true. 

How beautiful to see 166 

Once more a shepherd of mankind indeed. 
Who loved his charge, but never loved to lead ; 
One whose meek flock the people joyed to be, 

Not lured by any cheat of birth, 170 

But by his clear-grained human worth. 
And brave old wisdom of sincerity ! 

They knew that outward grace is dust ; 
They could not choose but trust 
In that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill, 175 

And supple-tempered will 
That bent like perfect steel to spring again and 
thrust. 
His was no lonely mountain-peak of mind. 
Thrusting to thin air o'er our cloudy bars, 
A sea-mark now, now lost in vapors blind ; 180 
Broad prairie rather, genial, level-lined, 
Fruitful and friendly for all human-kind. 
Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of loftiest stars. 

Nothing of Europe here, 
Or, then, of Europe fronting morn ward still, 185 
Ere any names of Serf and Peer 
Could Nature's equal scheme deface 

And thwart her genial will ; 
Here was a type of the true elder race. 
And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to 
face. 190 

I praise him not ; it were too late ; 



ILLINOIS COURSE — SEVENTH YEAR 145 

And some innative weakness there must be 

In him who condescends to victory 

Such as the Present gives, and cannot wait, 

Safe in himself as in a fate. 195 

So always firmly he : 
He knew to bide his time, 
And can his fame abide, 
Still patient in his simple faith sublime, 

Till the wise years decide. 200 

Great captains, with their guns and drums, 
Disturb our judgment for the hour, 
But at last silence comes ; 
These all are gone, and, standing like a tower, 
Our children shall behold his fame, 205 

The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man. 
Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame. 
New birth of our new soil, the first American. 

VII 

Long as man's hope insatiate can discern 

Or only guess some more inspiring goal 210 
Outside of Self, enduring as the pole. 
Along whose course the flying axles burn 
Of spirits bravely-pitched, earth's manlier brood ; 

Long as below we cannot find 
The meed that stills the inexorable mind ; 215 
So lono^ this faith to some ideal Good, 
Under whatever mortal name it masks. 
Freedom, Law, Country, this ethereal mood 
That thanks the Fates for their severer tasks. 
Feeling its challenged pulses leap, 220 

While others skulk in subterfuges cheap, 
And, set in Danger's van, has all the boon it asks, 



146 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

Shall win man's praise and woman's love, 
Shall be a wisdom that we set above 

All other skills and gifts to culture dear, 225 

A virtue round whose forehead we enwreathe 
Laurels that with a living passion breathe 

When other crowns grow, while we twine them, sear. 
What brings us thronging these high rites to pay. 

And seal these hours the noblest of our year, 230 
Save that our brothers found this better way? 

VIII 

We sit here in the Promised Land 
That flows with Freedom's honey and milk ; 

But 't was they won it, sword in hand. 
Making the nettle danger soft for us as silk. 235 
We welcome back our bravest and our best ; — 
Ah me ! not all ! some come not with the rest. 
Who went forth brave and bright as any here ! 
I strive to mix some gladness with my strain. 

But the sad strings complain, 240 

And will not please the ear : 
I sweep them for a paean, but they wane 

Again and yet again 
Into a dirge, and die away in pain. 
In these brave ranks I only see the gaps, 245 

Thinking of dear ones whom the dumb turf wraps, 
Dark to the triumph which they died to gain : 
Fitlier may others greet the living, 
For me the past is unforgiving ; 

I with uncovered head 250 

Salute the sacred dead, 
235. See Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Ft. I, Act II, So. 3. 

" Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety." 



ILLINOIS COURSE — SEVENTH YEAR 147 

Who went, and who return not. — Say not so ! 
'T is not the grapes of Canaan that repay, 
But the high faith that failed not by the way ; 
Virtue treads paths that end not in the grave ; 255 
No ban of endless night exiles the brave ; 

And to the saner mind 
We rather seem the dead that stayed behind. 
Blow, trumpets, all your exultations blow ! 
For never shall their aureoled presence lack : 260 
I see them muster in a gleaming row. 
With ever-youthful brows that nobler show ; 
We find in our dull road their shining track ; 

In every nobler mood 
We feel the orient of their spirit glow, 265 

Part of our life's unalterable good, 
Of all our saintlier aspiration ; 

They come transfigured back, 
Secure from change in their high-hearted ways. 
Beautiful evermore, and with the rays 270 

Of morn on their white Shields of Expectation ! 

IX 

But is there hope to save 
Even this ethereal essence from the grave ? 
What ever 'scaped Oblivion's subtle wrong 
Save a few clarion names, or golden threads of 

song ? 275 

Before my musing eye 
The mighty ones of old sweep by, 
Disvoiced now and insubstantial things, 

253. See the Book of Numbers, chapter xiii. 
255. Compare Gray's line in Elegy in a Country Churchyard, 
" The paths of glory lead but to the grave." 



148 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

As noisy once as we ; poor ghosts of kings, 
Shadows of empire wholly gone to dust, 280 

And many races, nameless long ago, 

• To darkness driven by that imperious gust 
Of ever-rushing Time that here doth blow : 
O visionary world, condition strange, 
Where naught abiding is but only Change, 285 

Where the deep-bolted stars themselves still shift 
and range ! 
Shall we to more continuance make pretence ? 

Renown builds tombs ; a life-estate is Wit ; 
And, bit by bit. 

The cunning years steal all from us but woe : 290 
Leaves are we, whose decays no harvest sow. 

But, when we vanish hence. 
Shall they lie forceless in the dark below. 
Save to make green their little length of sods, 
Or deepen pansies for a year or two, 295 

Who now to us are shining-sweet as gods ? 
Was dying all they had the skill to do ? 
That were not fruitless : but the Soul resents 
Such short-lived service, as if blind events 
Ruled without her, or earth could so endure ; 300 
She claims a more divine investiture 
Of longer tenure than Fame's airy rents ; 
Whate'er she touches doth her nature share ; 
Her inspiration haunts the ennobled air. 

Gives eyes to mountains blind, 305 

Ears to the deaf earth, voices to the wind, 
And her clear trump sings succor everywhere 
By lonely bivouacs to the wakeful mind ; 
For soul inherits all that soul could dare : 

Yea, Manhood hath a wider span 310 



ILLINOIS COURSE — SEVENTH YEAR 149 

And larger privilege of life than man. 
The single deed, the private sacrifice, 
So radiant now through proudly-hidden tears, 
Is covered up ere long from mortal eyes 314 

With thoughtless drift of the deciduous years ; 
But that high privilege that makes all men peers, 
That leap of heart whereby a people rise 
Up to a noble anger's height, 
And, flamed on by the Fates, not shrink, but grow 
more bright. 
That swift validity in noble veins, 320 

Of choosing danger and disdaining shame, 

Of being set on flame 
By the pure fire that flies all contact base, 
But wraps its chosen with angelic might, 

These are imperishable gains, 325 

Sure as the sun, medicinal as light. 
These hold great futures in their lusty reins 
And certify to earth a new imperial race. 

X 

Who now shall sneer? 
Who dare again to say we trace 330 

Our lines to a plebeian race ? 
Roundhead and Cavalier ! 
Dumb are those names erewhile in battle loud ; 
Dream-footed as the shadow of a cloud. 

They flit across the ear : 335 

That is best blood that hath most iron in 't, 
To edge resolve with, pouring without stint 
For what makes manhood dear. 
Tell us not of Plantagenets, 
Hapsburgs, and Guelfs, whose thin bloods crawl 



150 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

Down from some victor in a border-brawl ! 341 

How poor their outworn coronets, 
Matched with one leaf of that plain civic wreath 
Our brave for honor's blazon shall bequeath, 

Through whose desert a rescued Nation sets 345 
Her heel on treason, and the trumpet hears 
Shout victory, tingling Europe's sullen ears 

With vain resentments and more vain regrets ! 

XI 

Not in anger, not in pride, 

Pure from passion's mixture rude, 350 

Ever to base earth alHed, 

But with far-heard gratitude. 

Still with heart and voice renewed. 
To heroes living and dear martyrs dead, 
The strain should close that consecrates our brave. 
Lift the heart and lift the head ! 356 

Lofty be its mood and grave. 

Not without a martial ring, 

Not without a prouder tread 

And a peal of exultation : 360 

Little right has he to sing 

Through whose heart in such an hour 

Beats no march of conscious power, 

Sweeps no tumult of elation ! 

'T is no Man we celebrate, 365 

By his country's victories great, 
A hero half, and half the whim of Fate, 

But the pith and marrow of a Nation 

Drawing force from all her men. 

Highest, hmnblest, weakest, all, 370 

For her time of need, and then 



ILLINOIS COURSE — SEVENTH YEAR 161 

Pulsing it again through them, 
Till the basest can no longer cower, 
Feeling his soul spring up divinely tall, 
Touched but in passing by her mantle-hem. 375 

Come back, then, noble pride, for/t is her dower ! 
How could poet ever tower, 
If his passions, hopes, and fears. 
If his triumphs and his tears, 
Kept not measure with his people ? 380 

Boom, cannon, boom to all the winds and waves ! 
Clash out, glad bells, from every rocking steeple ! 
Banners, adance with triumph, bend your staves I 
And from every mountain-peak 
Let beacon-fire to answering beacon speak, 385 
Katahdin tell Monadnock, Whiteface he, » 
And so leap on in light from sea to sea, 
Till the glad news be sent 
Across a kindling continent. 
Making earth feel more firm and air breathe 
braver. 390 

Be proud ! for she is saved, and all have helped to 
save her ! 
She that lifts up the manhood of the poor. 
She of the open soul and open door. 
With room about her hearth for aU mankind ! 
The fire is dreadful in her eyes no more ; 395 
From her bold front the helm she doth unbind. 
Sends all her handmaid armies back to spin, 
And bids her navies, that so lately hurled 
Their crashing battle, hold their thunders in. 
Swimming like birds of calm along the unharmful 
shore. 400 

No challenge sends she to the elder world. 



152 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

That looked askance and hated ; a light scorn 
Plays o'er her mouth, as round her mighty knees 
She calls her children back, and waits the morn 
Of nobler day, enthroned between her subject seas." 

XII 

Bow down, dear Land, for thou hast found release I 
Thy God, in these distempered days, 407 

Hath taught thee the sure wisdom of His ways. 
And through thine enemies hath wrought thy peace ! 

Bow down in prayer and praise ! 410 

No poorest in thy borders but may now 
Lift to the juster skies a man's enfranchised brow, 
O Beautiful ! my Country I ours once more ! 
Smoothing thy gold of war-dishevelled hair 
O'er such sweet brows as never other wore, 415 

And letting thy set lips, 

Freed from wrath's pale eclipse, 
The rosy edges of their smile lay bare, 
What words divine of lover or of poet 
Could tell our love and make thee know it, 420 
Among the Nations bright beyond compare ? 

What were our lives without thee ? 

What all our lives to save thee ? 

We reck not what we gave thee ; 

We will not dare to doubt thee, 425 

But ask whatever else, and we will dare ! 



ILLINOIS COURSE — SEVENTH YEAR 153 

CHILDREN 
Henry Wadswokth Longfellow 

Come to me, O ye children ! 

For I hear you at your play, 
And the questions that perplexed me 

Have vanished quite away. 

Ye open the eastern windows, 5 

That look towards the sun, 
Where thoughts are singing swallows 

And the brooks of morning run. 

In your hearts are the birds and the sunshine. 
In your thoughts the brooklet's flow, 10 

But in mine is the wind of Autumn 
And the first fall of the snow. 

Ah ! what would the world be to us 

If the children were no more ? 
We should dread the desert behind us 15 

Worse than the dark before. 

What the leaves are to the forest, 

With light and air for food, 
Ere their sweet and tender juices 

Have been hardened into wood, — 20 

^ This poem of Longfellow's and the four following — The 
Old Clock on the Stairs, The Herons of Elmwood, The Two Angels, 
and To the River Charles — refer to his Cambridge home. So, 
also, do The Children's Hour, page 14, and The Village Black- 
smith, page 37. 



154 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

That to the world are children ; 

Through them it feels the glow 
Of a brighter and sunnier climate 

Than reaches the trunks below. 



Come to me, O ye children ! 25 

And whisper in my ear 
What the birds and the winds are singing 

In your sunny atmosphere. 

For what are all our contrivings, 

And the wisdom of our books, 30 

When compared with your caresses. 

And the gladness of your looks ? 

Ye are better than all the ballads 

That ever were sung or said ; 
For ye are living poems, 35 

And all the rest are dead. 



THE OLD CLOCK ON THE STAIRS 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 

Somewhat back from the village street 
Stands the old-fashioned country-seat. 
Across its antique portico 
Tall poplar-trees their shadows throw ; 

2. The house thus described was that now known as the Plun- 
kett mansion in Pittsfield, once the home of Mrs. Longfellow's 
maternal grandfather. In the poet's own house in Cambridge 
there also stood a tall old clock on the stairs. 



ILLINOIS COURSE — SEVENTH YEAR 155 

And from its station in the hall 5 

An ancient timepiece says to all, — 
" Forever — never ! 
Never — forever ! " 

Half-way up the stairs it stands. 

And points and beckons with its hands 10 

From its case of massive oak, 

Like a monk, who, under his cloak. 

Crosses himself, and sighs, alas ! 

With sorrowful voice to all who pass, — 

' ' Fore ver — never ! 1 5 

Never — forever ! " 

By day its voice is low and light ; 
But in the silent dead of night. 
Distinct as a passing footstep's fall. 
It echoes along the vacant hall, 20 

Along the ceiling, along the floor. 
And seems to say, at each chamber-door, — 
" Forever — never ! 
Never — forever ! " 

Through days of sorrow and of mirth, 25 

Through days of death and days of birth. 
Through every swift vicissitude 
Of changeful time, unchanged it has stood. 
And as if, like God, it all things saw. 
It calmly repeats those words of awe, — 30 
" Forever — never ! 
Never — forever ! " 

In that mansion used to be 
Free-hearted Hospitality ; 



156 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

His great fires up the chimney roared ; 35 

The stranger feasted at his board ; 
But, like the skeleton at the feast, 
That warning timepiece never ceased, — 
" Forever — never ! 
Never — forever ! " 40 

There groups of merry children played. 
There youths and maidens dreaming strayed ; 
O precious hours ! O golden prime. 
And affluence of love and time ! 
Even as a miser counts his gold, 45 

Those hours the ancient timepiece told, — 
" Forever — never ! 
Never — forever ! " 

From that chamber, clothed in white, 

The bride came forth on her wedding night ; 

There, in that silent room below, 51 

The dead lay in his shroud of snow ; 

And in the hush that followed the prayer, 

Was heard the old clock on the stair, — 

" Forever — never ! 55 

Never — forever ! " 

All are scattered now and fled. 
Some are married, some are dead ; 
And when I ask, with throbs of pain, 
" Ah ! when shall they all meet again ? " 60 

As in the days long since gone by, 
The ancient timepiece makes reply, — 
" Forever — never ! 
Never — forever ! " 



ILLINOIS COURSE — SEVENTH YEAR 157 

Never here, forever there, 65 

Where all parting, pain, and care. 
And death, and time shall disappear, — 
Forever there, but never here ! 
The horologe of Eternity 

Sayeth this incessantly, — 70 

" Forever — never ! 
Never — forever ! " 



THE HERONS OF ELM WOOD 

Henby Wadsworth Longfellow 

Warm and still is the simimer night, 
As here by the river's brink I wander ; 

White overhead are the stars, and white 

The glimmering lamps on the hillside yonder. 

Silent are all the sounds of day ; 5 

Nothing I hear but the chirp of crickets, 

And the cry of ^ the herons winging their way 
O'er the poet's house in the Elmwood thickets. 

Call to him, herons, as slowly you pass 9 

To your roosts in the haunts of the exiled thrushes. 

Sing him the song of the green morass, 

And the tides that water the reeds and rushes. 

Sing him the mystical Song of the Hern, 

And the secret that baffles our utmost seeking ; 

For only a sound of lament we discern, 15 

And cannot interpret the words you are speaking. 

8. Elmwood, a short distance from Longfellow's house, was 
the home of his brother poet and friend, James Russell Lowell. 



158 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

Sing of the air, and the wild delight 

Of wings that uplift and winds that uphold you, 
The joy of freedom, the rapture of flight 

Through the drift of the floating mists that infold 
you ; 20 

Of the landscape lying so far below. 

With its towns and rivers and desert places ; 

And the splendor of light above, and the glow 
Of the limitless, blue, ethereal spaces. 

Ask him if songs of the Troubadours, 25 

Or of Minnesingers in old black-letter, 

Sound in his ears more sweet than yours. 

And if yours are not sweeter and wilder and better. 

Sing to him, say to him, here at his gate, 

Where the boughs of the stately elms are meeting. 

Some one hath lingered to meditate, 31 

And send him unseen this friendly greeting ; 

That many another hath done the same, 

Though not by a sound was the silence broken ; 

The surest pledge of a deathless name 35 

Is the silent homage of thoughts unspoken. 



THE TWO ANGELS 
Henry Wads worth Longfellow 

Two angels, one of Life and one of Death, 
Passed o'er our village as the morning broke ; 

The dawn was on their faces, and beneath, 

The sombre houses hearsed with plumes of smoke. 



ILLINOIS COURSE — SEVENTH YEAR 159 

Their attitude and aspect were the same, 5 

Alike their features and their robes of white ; 

But one was crowned with amaranth, as with flame, 
And one with asphodels, like flakes of light. 

I saw them pause on their celestial way ; 9 

Then said I, with deep fear and doubt oppressed, 
" Beat not so loud, my heart, lest thou betray 
The place where thy beloved are at rest ! 

And he who wore the crown of asphodels, 
Descending, at my door began to knock. 

And my soul sank within me, as in wells 15 

The waters sink before an earthquake's shock. 

I recognized the nameless agony, 

The terror and the tremor and the pain, 

That oft before had filled or haunted me. 

And now returned with threefold strength again. 

The door I opened to my heavenly guest, 21 

And listened, for I thought I heard God's voice ; 

And, knowing whatsoe'er he sent was best. 
Dared neither to lament nor to rejoice. 

Then with a smile that filled the house with light, 
" My errand is not Death, but Life," he said ; 26 

And ere I answered, passing out of sight. 
On his celestial embassy he sped. 

; 

'Twas at thy door, O friend ! and not at mine, 
The angel with the amaranthine wreath, 30 

Pausing, descended, and with voice divine 

Whispered a word that had a sound like Death. 



160 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

Then fell upon the house a sudden gloom, 
A shadow on those features fair and thin ; 

And softly, from that hushed and darkened room, 35 
Two angels issued, where but one went in. 

All is of God ! If he but wave his hand, 

The mists collect, the rain falls thick and 
loud, 

Till, with a smile of light on sea and land, 

Lo ! he looks back from the departing cloud. 40 

Angels of Life and Death alike are his ; 

Without his leave they pass no threshold o'er ; 
Who, then, would wish or dare, believing this. 

Against his messengers to shut the door ? 



TO THE RIVER CHARLES 

Henry Wadswobth Longfellow 

River ! that in silence windest 

Through the meadows, bright and free. 

Till at length thy rest thou findest 
In the bosom of the sea ! 

Four long years of mingled feeling, 5 

Half in rest, and half in strife, 

I have seen thy waters stealing 
Onward, like the stream of life. 

1. The river Charles flows in view of the mansion in Cambridge 
which Mr. Longfellow began to occupy in the summer of 1837. 



ILLINOIS COURSE — SEVENTH YEAR 161 

Thou hast taught me, Silent River ! 

Many a lesson, deep and long ; 10 

Thou hast been a generous giver ; 

I can give thee but a song. 

Oft in sadness and in illness, 

I have watched thy current glide, 

Till the beauty of its stillness 15 

Overflowed me, like a tide. 

And in better hours and brighter, 
When I saw thy waters gleam, 

I have felt my heart beat lighter, 

And leap onward with thy stream. 20 

Not for this alone I love thee, 

Nor because thy waves of blue 
From celestial seas above thee 

Take their own celestial hue. 

Where yon shadowy woodlands hide thee, 25 

And thy waters disappear. 
Friends I love have dwelt beside thee, 

And have made thy margin dear. 

More than this ; — thy name reminds me 
Of three friends, all true and tried ; 30 

And that name, like magic, binds me 
Closer, closer to thy side. 

30. The three friends hinted at were Charles Sumner, Charles 
Folsom, and Charles Amory. 



162 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

Friends my soul with joy remembers ! 

How like quivering flames they start, 
When I fan the living embers 35 

On the hearthstone of my heart ! 

'T is for this, thou Silent River ! 

That my spirit leans to thee ; 
Thou hast been a generous giver. 

Take this idle song from me. 40 



RHOECUS 

James Russell Lowell 

God sends his teachers unto every age. 
To every clime, and every race of men. 
With revelations fitted to their gi'owth 
And shape of mind, nor gives the realm of Truth 
Into the selfish rule of one sole race : 5 

Therefore each form of worship that hath swayed 
The life of man, and given it to grasp 
The master-key of knowledge, reverence. 
Infolds some germs of goodness and of right ; 
Else never had the eager soul, which loathes 10 

The slothful down of pampered ignorance. 
Found in it even a moment's fitful rest. 

There is an instinct in the human heart 
Which makes that all the fables it hath coined. 
To justify the reign of its belief 15 

And strengthen it by beauty's right divine. 
Veil in their inner cells a mystic gift, 
Which, like the hazel twig, in faithful hands. 



ILLINOIS COURSE — SEVENTH YEAR 163 

Points surely to the hidden springs of truth. 

For, as in nature naught is made in vain, 20 

But all things have within their hull of use 

A wisdom and a meaning which may speak 

Of spiritual secrets to the ear 

Of spirit ; so, in whatsoe'er the heart 

Hath fashioned for a solace to itself, 25 

To make its inspirations suit its creed. 

And from the niggard hands of falsehood wring 

Its needful food of truth, there ever is 

A sympathy with Nature, which reveals, 

Not less than her own works, pure gleams of 

light 
And earnest parables of inward lore. 31 

Hear now this fairy legend of old Greece, 
As full of gracious youth and beauty still 
As the immortal freshness of that grace 
Carved for all ages on some Attic frieze. 35 

A youth named Rhoecus, wandering in the 

wood. 
Saw an old oak just trembling to its fall, 
And, feeling pity of so fair a tree. 
He propped its gray trunk with admiring care. 
And with a thoughtless footstep loitered on. 40 

But, as he turned, he heard a voice behind 
That murmured " Rhoecus ! " 'T was as if the 

leaves. 
Stirred by a passing breath, had murmured it, 
And, while he paused bewildered, yet again 
It murmured " Rhoecus ! " softer than a breeze. 45 
He started and beheld with dizzy eyes 
What seemed the substance of a happy dream 



164 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

Stand there before him, spreading a warm glow 

Within the green glooms of the shadowy oak. 

It seemed a woman's shape, yet far too fair 50 

To be a woman, and with eyes too meek 

For any that were wont to mate with gods. 

All naked like a goddess stood she there, 

And like a goddess all too beautiful 

To feel the guilt-born earthliness of shame. 55 

'' Rhoecus, I am the Dryad of this tree," 
Thus she began, dropping her low-toned words 
Serene, and full, and clear, as drops of dew, 

" And with it I am doomed to live and die ; 
The rain and sunshine are my caterers, 60 

Nor have I other bliss than simple life ; 
Now ask me what thou wilt, that I can give, 
And with a thankful joy it shall be thine." 

Then Rhoecus, with a flatter at the heart, 
Yet, by the prompting of such beauty, bold, 65 

Answered : " What is there that can satisfy 
The endless craving of the soul but love? 
Give me thy love, or but the hope of that 
Which must be evermore my nature's goal." 
After a little pause she said again, 70 

But with a glimpse of sadness in her tone, 
'^ I give it, Rhoecus, though a perilous gift ; 
An hour before the sunset meet me here." 
And straightway there was nothing he could see 
But the green glooms beneath the shadowy oak, 75 
And not a sound came to his straining ears 
But the low trickling rustle of the leaves. 
And far away upon an emerald slope 
The falter of an idle shepherd's pipe. 



ILLINOIS COURSE — SEVENTH YEAR 165 

Now, in those clays of simpleness and faith, 80 
Men did not think that happy things were dreams 
Because they overstepped the narrow bourn 
Of likelihood, but reverently deemed 
Nothing too wondrous or too beautiful 
To be the guerdon of a daring heart. 85 

So RhoBCus made no doubt that he was blest. 
And all along unto the city's gate 
Earth seemed to spring beneath him as he walked. 
The clear, broad sky looked bluer than its wont. 
And he could scarce believe he had not wings, 90 
Such sunshine seemed to glitter through his veins 
Instead of blood, so light he felt and strange. 

Young Rhoecus had a faithful heart enough, 
But one that in the present dwelt too much. 
And, taking with blithe welcome whatsoe'er 95 

Chance gave of joy, was wholly bound in that. 
Like the contented peasant of a vale. 
Deemed it the world, and never looked beyond. 
So, haply meeting in the afternoon 
Some comrades who were playing at the dice, 100 
He joined them, and forgot all else beside. 

The dice were rattling at the merriest. 
And Rhoecus, who had met but sorry luck. 
Just laughed in triumph at a happy throw, 104 

When through the room there hummed a yellow bee 
That buzzed about his ear with down-dropped legs 
As if to light. And Rhoecus laughed and said, 
Feeling how red and flushed he was with loss, 
'' By Venus ! does he take me for a rose ? " 
And brushed him off with rough, impatient hand. 



166 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

But still the bee came back, and thrice again 111 

Rhoecus did beat him off with growing wrath. 

Then through the window flew the wounded bee, 

And Rhoecus, tracking him with angry eyes, 

Saw a sharp mountain-peak of Thessaly 115 

Against the red disk of the setting sun, — 

And instantly the blood sank from his heart. 

As if its very walls had caved away. 

Without a word he turned, and, rushing forth, 

Ran madly through the city and the gate, 120 

And o'er the plain, which now the wood's long 

shade. 
By the low sun thrown forward broad and dim. 
Darkened wellnigh unto the city's wall. 

Quite spent and out of breath he reached the 
tree. 
And, listening fearfully, he heard once more 125 
The low voice murmur " Rhoecus ! " close at hand : 
Whereat he looked around him, but could see 
Naught but the deepening glooms beneath the oak. 
Then sighed the voice, " O Rhoecus ! nevermore 
Shalt thou behold me or by day or night, 130 

Me, who would fain have blessed thee with a love 
More ripe and bounteous than ever yet 
Filled up with nectar any mortal heart : 
But thou didst scorn my humble messenger. 
And sent'st him back to me with bruised wings. 135 
We spirits only show to gentle eyes. 
We ever ask an undivided love. 
And he who scorns the least of Nature's works 
Is thenceforth exiled and shut out from all. 
Farewell ! for thou canst never see me more." 140 



ILLINOIS COURSE — SEVENTH YEAR 167 

Then Rhoecus beat his breast, and groaned 

aloud, 
And cried, " Be pitiful ! forgive me yet 
This once, and I shall never need it more ! " 
" Alas ! " the voice returned, '' 't is thou art blind. 
Not I unmerciful ; I can forgive, 145 

But have no skill to heal thy spirit's eyes ; 
Only the soul hath power o'er itself." 
With that again there murmured " Nevermore ! " 
And Rhoecus after heard no other sound. 
Except the rattling of the oak's crisp leaves, 150 
Like the long surf upon a distant shore. 
Raking the sea-worn pebbles up and down. 
The night had gathered round him : o'er the 

plain 
The city sparkled with its thousand lights. 
And sounds of revel fell upon his ear 155 

Harshly and like a curse ; above, the sky, 
With all its bright sublimity of stars. 
Deepened, and on his forehead smote the breeze : 
Beauty was all around him and delight. 
But from that eve he was alone on earth. 160 



TO THE DANDELION 

James Russell Lowell 

Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way, 
Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold. 

First pledge of blithesome May, 
Which children pluck, and, full of pride uphold. 

High-hearted buccaneers, o'erjoyed that they 5 
An Eldorado in the grass have found. 

Which not the rich earth's ample round 



168 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

May matcli in wealth, thou art more dear to me 
Than all the prouder summer-blooms may be. 

Gold such as thine ne'er drew the Spanish prow 10 
Through the primeval hush of Indian seas, 

Nor wrinkled the lean brow 
Of age, to rob the lover's heart of ease ; 

'T is the Sj^ring's largess, which she scatters now • 
To rich and poor alike, with lavish hand, 15 

Though most hearts never understand 
To take it at God's value, but pass by 
The offered wealth with unrewarded eye. 

Thou art my tropics and mine Italy ; 
To look at thee unlocks a warmer clime ; 20 

The eyes thou givest me 
Are in the heart, and heed not space or time : 

Not in mid June the golden-cuirassed bee 
Feels a more summer-like warm ravishment 

In the white lily's breezy tent, 25 

His fragrant Sybaris, than I, when first 
From the dark green thy yellow circles burst. 

Then think I of deep shadows on the grass, 
Of meadows where in sun the cattle graze. 

Where, as the breezes pass, 30 

The gleaming rushes lean a thousand ways, 
Of leaves that slumber in a cloudy mass, 
Or whiten in the wind, of waters blue 

That from the distance sparkle through 
Some woodland gap, and of a sky above, 35 

Where one white cloud like a stray lamb doth 
move, 



ILLINOIS COURSE — SEVENTH YEAR 169 

My childhood's earliest thoughts are linked with 
thee ; 
The sight of thee calls back the robin's song, 

Who, from the dark old tree 
Beside the door, sang clearly all day long, 40 

And I, secure in childish piety. 
Listened as if I heard an angel sing 

With news from heaven, which he could bring 
Fresh every day to my untainted ears 
When birds and flowers and I were happy peers. 45 

How like a prodigal doth nature seem. 
When thou, for all thy gold, so common art ! 

Thou teachest me to deem 
More sacredly of every human heart, 

Since each reflects in joy its scanty gleam 50 

Of heaven, and could some wondrous secret show, 
Did we but pay the love we owe, 
And with a child's undoubting wisdom look 
On all these living pages of God's book. 



EIGHTH YEAR 

ABRAHAM DAVENPORT* 

John Gkeenlbaf Whittiek 

^he famous Dark Day of New England, May 19, 1780, was a 
physical puzzle for many years to our ancestors, but its occurrence 
brought something- more than philosophical speculation into the minds 
of those who passed through it. The incident of Colonel Abraham 
Davenport's sturdy protest is a matter of history. 

In the old days (a custom laid aside 

With breeches and cocked hats) the people sent 

Their wisest men to make the public laws. 

And so, from a brown homestead, where the Sound 

Drinks the small tribute of the Mianas, 5 

Waved over by the woods of Rippowams, 

And hallowed by pure lives and tranquil deaths, 

Stamford sent up to the councils of the State 

Wisdom and grace in Abraham Davenport. 

'T was on a May-day of the far old year lo 

Seventeen hundred eighty, that there fell 
Over the bloom and sweet life of the Spring, 
Over the fresh earth and the heaven of noon, 
A horror of great darkness, like the night 
In day of which the Norland sagas tell, — 15 

The Twilight of the Gods. The low-hung sky 
Was black with ominous clouds, save where its rim 
Was fringed with a dull glow, like that which climbs 



ILLINOIS COURSE— EIGHTH YEAR 171 

The crater's sides from the red hell below. 

Birds ceased to sing, and all the barn-yard fowls 20 

Roosted ; the cattle at the pasture bars 

Lowed, and looked homeward ; bats on leathern 

wings 
Flitted abroad ; the sounds of labor died ; 
Men prayed, and women wept; all ears grew sharp 
To hear the doom-blast of the trumpet shatter 25 
The black sky, that the dreadful face of Christ 
Might look from the rent clouds, not as he looked 
A loving guest at Bethany, but stern 
As Justice and inexorable Law. 

Meanwhile in the old State House, dim as 
ghosts, 30 

Sat the lawgivers of Connecticut, 
Trembling beneath their legislative robes. 
It is the Lord's Great Day ! Let us adjourn," 
Some said ; and then, as if with one accord. 
All eyes were turned to Abraham Davenport. 35 
He rose, slow cleaving with his steady voice 
The intolerable hush. " This well may be 
The Day of Judgment which the world awaits ; 
But be it so or not, I only know 
My present duty, and my Lord's command 40 

To occupy till He come. So at the post 
Where He hath set me in His providence, 
I choose, for one, to meet Him face to face, — 
No faithless servant frightened from my task. 
But ready when the Lord of the harvest calls ; 45 
And therefore, with all reverence, I woidd say, 
Let God do His work, we will see to ours, 
Bring in the candles." And they brought them in. 



172 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

Then by the flaring lights the Speaker read, 
Albeit with husky voice and shaking hands, 50 

An act to amend an act to regulate 
The shad and alewive fisheries. Whereupon 
Wisely and well spake Abraham Davenport, 
Straight to the question, with no figures of speech 
Save the ten Arab signs, yet not without 55 

The shrewd dry humor natural to the man : 
His awestruck colleagues listening all the while, 
Between the pauses of his argument. 
To hear the thunder of the wrath of God 
Break from the hollow trumpet of the cloud. 60 

And there he stands in memory to this day, 
Erect, self-poised, a rugged face, half seen 
Against the background of unnatural dark, 
A witness to the ages as they pass. 
That simple duty hath no place for fear. 65 



FOR AN AUTUMN FESTIVAL 
John Gbeenleaf Whittier 

The Persian's flowery gifts, the shrine 
Of fruitful Ceres charm no more ; 

The woven wreaths of oak and pine 
Are dust along the Isthmian shore. 

But beauty hath its homage still, 
And nature holds us still in debt ; 

And woman's grace and household skill, 
And manhood's toil are honored yet. 



ILLINOIS COURSE — EIGHTH YEAR 173 

And we, to-day, amidst our flowers 

And fruits, have come to own again 10 

The blessings of the summer hours, 

The early and the latter rain ; 

To see our Father's hand once more 

Reverse for us the plenteous horn 
Of autumn, filled and running o'er 15 

With fruit, and flower, and golden corn ! 

Once more the liberal year laughs out 
O'er richer stores than gems or gold ; 

Once more with harvest-song and shout 

Is Nature's bloodless triumph told. 20 

Our common mother rests and sings. 

Like Ruth, among her garnered sheaves ; 

Her lap is full of goodly things. 

Her brow is bright with autumn leaves. 

Oh, favors every year made new ! 25 

Oh, gifts with rain and sunshine sent ! 

The bounty overruns our due. 

The fulness shames our discontent. 

We shut our eyes, the flowers bloom on ; 

We murmur, but the corn-ears fill, 30 

We choose the shadow, but the sun 

That casts it shines behind us still. 

God gives us with our rugged soil 

The power to make it Eden-fair, 
And richer fruits to crown our toil 35 

Than summer-wedded islands bear. 



174 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

\ Who murmurs at his lot to-day? 

Who scorns his native fruit and bloom? 
Or sighs for dainties far away, 

Beside the bounteous board of home ? 40 

Thank Heaven, instead, that Freedom's arm 
Can change a rocky soil to gold, — 

That brave and generous lives can warm 
A clime with northern ices cold. 

And let these altars, wreathed with flowers 45 
And piled with fruits, awake again 

Thanksgivings for the golden hours, 
The early and the latter rain ! 



THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS 

Oliver Wendell Holmes 

" We need not trouble ourselves about the distinction between this 
[the Pearly Nautilus] and the Paper Nautilus, the Arg-onauta of the 
ancients. The name applied to both shows that each has long been 
compared to a ship, as you may see more fully in Webster's Dictionary 
or the Encyclopaedia, to which lie refers. If you will look into Rog-et's 
Bridgewater Treatise, you will find a figure of one of these shells, and 
a section of it. The last will show you the series of enlarging com- 
partments successively dwelt in by the animal that inhabits the shell, 
which is built in a widening spiral." . . , 

" I have now and then found a naturalist who still worried over the 
distinction between the Pearly Nautilus and the Paper Nautilus, or 
Argonauta. As the stories about both are mere fables, attaching to the 
Physalia, or Portuguese man-of-war, as well as to these two mollusks, 
it seems over-nice to quarrel with the poetical handling of a fiction 
sufficiently justified by the name commonly applied to the ship of pearl 
as well as the ship of paper." — The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. 

This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign. 
Sails the unshadowed main, — 



ILLINOIS COURSE — EIGHTH YEAR 175 

The venturous bark that flings 
On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings 
In guKs enchanted, where the siren sings, 5 

And coral reefs lie bare,. 
Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their stream- 
ing hair. 

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl ; 

Wrecked is the ship of pearl 

And every chambered cell, 10 

Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell, 
As the frail tenant shaped his growmg shell. 

Before thee lies revealed, — 
Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed ! 

Year after year beheld the silent toil 15 

That spread his lustrous coil ; 

Still, as the spiral grew. 
He left the past year's dwelling for the new, 
Stole with soft step its shining archway through, 

Built up its idle door, 20 

Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the 
old no more. 

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by 
thee. 
Child of the wandering sea. 
Cast from her lap, forlorn ! 
From thy dead lips a clearer note is born 25 

Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn ! 

While on mine ear it rings, 
Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice 
that sings : — 



176 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, 

As the swift seasons roll ! 30 

Leave thy low- vaulted past ! 

Let each new temple, nobler than the last, 

Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast. 
Till thou at length art free, 

Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting 
sea! 



THE LEGEND BEAUTIFUL 

Henby Wadsworth Longfellow 

" Hadst thou stayed, I must have fled ! " 
That is what the Vision said. 

In his chamber all alone, 

Kneeling on the floor of stone, 

Prayed the Monk in deep contrition 5 

For his sins of indecision, 

Prayed for greater self-denial 

In temptation and in trial ; 

It was noonday by the dial. 

And the Monk was all alone. 10 

Suddenly, as if it lightened, 

An unwonted splendor brightened 

All withm him and without him 

In that narrow cell of stone ; 

And he saw the Blessed Vision 15 

Of our Lord, with light Elysian 

Like a vesture wrapped about him. 

Like a garment round him thrown. 



ILLINOIS COURSE — EIGHTH YEAR 177 

Not as crucified and slain, 

Not in agonies of pain, 20 

Not witli bleeding hands and feet 

Did the Monk his Master see ; 

But as in the village street. 

In the house or harvest-field, 

Halt and lame and blind he healed, 25 

When he walked in Galilee. 

In an attitude imploring. 

Hands upon his bosom crossed. 

Wondering, worshipping, adoring. 

Knelt the Monk in rapture lost. 30 

Lord, he thought, in heaven that reignest. 

Who am I, that thus thou deignest 

To reveal thyself to me ? 

Who am I, that from the centre 

Of thy glory thou shouldst enter 35 

This poor cell, my guest to be ? 

Then amid his exaltation. 

Loud the convent bell appalling, 

From its belfry calling, calling. 

Rang through court and corridor 40 

With persistent iteration 

He had never heard before. 

It was now the appointed hour 

When alike in shine or shower, 

Winter's cold or summer's heat, 45 

To the convent portals came 

All the blind and halt and lame, 

All the beggars of the street. 

For their daily dole of food 



178 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

Dealt them by the brotherhood ; 50 

And their almoner was he 
Who upon his bended knee, 
Rapt in silent ecstasy 
Of divinest self-surrender, 
Saw the Vision and the Splendor. 55 

Deep distress and hesitation 
Mingled with his adoration ; 
Should he go or should he stay ? 
Should he leave the poor to wait 
Hungry at the convent gate, 60 

Till the Vision passed away? 
Should he sliglit his radiant guest, 
Slight this visitant celestial. 
For a crowd of ragged, bestial 
Beggars at the convent gate? 65 

Would the Vision there remain? 
Would the Vision come again ? 
Then a voice within his breast 
Whispered, audible and clear 
As if to the outward ear : 70 

" Do thy duty ; that is best ; 
Leave unto thy Lord the rest ! " 

Straightway to his feet he started, 

And with longing look intent 

On the Blessed Vision bent, 75 

Slowly from his cell departed. 

Slowly on his errand went. 

At the gate the poor were waiting, 
Looking thi'ough the iron grating, 
With that terror in the eye 80 



ILLINOIS COURSE — EIGHTH YEAR 179 

That is only seen in those 
Who amid their wants and woes 
Hear the sound of doors that close, 
And of feet that pass them by ; 
Grown familiar with disfavor, 85 

Grown familiar with the savor 
Of the bread by which men die ! 
But to-day, they know not why, 
Like the gate of Paradise 
Seemed the convent gate to rise, 90 

Like a sacrament divine 
Seemed to them the bread and wine. 
In his heart the Monk was praying. 
Thinking of the homeless poor, 
What they suffer and endure ; 95 

What we see not, what we see : 
And the inward voice was saying : 
" Whatsoever thing thou doest 
To the least of mine and lowest. 
That thou doest unto Me ! " 100 

Unto Me ! but had the Vision 

Come to him in beggar's clothing. 

Come a mendicant imploring. 

Would he then have knelt adoring, 

Or have listened with derision, 105 

And have turned away with loathing? 

Thus his conscience put the question. 

Full of troublesome suggestion, 

As at length, with hurried pace. 

Towards his cell he turned his face, 110 

And beheld the convent bright. 



180 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

With a supernatural light, 

Like a luminous cloud expanding 

Over floor and wall and ceiling. 

But he paused with awe-struck feeling 115 

At the threshold of his door, 
For the Vision stiU was standing 
As he left it there before, 
When the convent bell appalling, 
From its belfry calling, calling, 120 

Summoned him to feed the poor. 
Through the long hour intervening 
It had waited his return. 
And he felt his bosom burn, 
Comprehending all the meaning, 125 

When the Blessed Vision said, 
" Hadst thou stayed, I must have fled ! " 



ICHABOD 

John Greenleaf Whittier 

So fallen I so lost ! the light withdrawn 

Which once he wore ! 
The glory from his gray hairs gone 

Forevermore ! 

Kevile him not, — the Tempter hath 

A snare for all ; 
And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath, 

Befit his fall ! 



ILLINOIS COURSE — EIGHTH YEAR 181 

Oh, dumb be passion's stormy rage, 

When he who might 10 

Have lighted up and led his age, 
Falls back in night. 

Scorn ! would the angels laugh, to mark 

A bright soul driven. 
Fiend-goaded, down the endless dark, 15 

From hope and heaven ! 

Let not the land once proud of him 

Insult him now. 
Nor brand with deeper shame his dim, 

Dishonored brow. 20 

But let its humbled sons, instead. 

From sea to lake, 
A long lament, as for the dead, 

In sadness make. 

Of all we loved and honored, naught 25 

Save power remains ; 
A fallen angel's pride of thought. 

Still strong in chains. 

All else is gone ; from those great eyes 

The soul has fled : 30 

When faith is lost, when honor dies. 
The man is dead ! 

Then, pay the reverence of old days 

To his dead fame ^ 
Walk backward, with averted gaze, 35 

And hide the shame ! 



182 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

"0 MOTHER OF A MIGHTY RACE" 

William Cullen Bryant 

Written after a journey to Europe, and at a time when there was dan- 
ger of war with England over the question of the northwestern boundary. 

O MOTHER of a mighty race, 
Yet lovely in thy youthful grace ! 
The elder dames, thy haughty peers, 
Admire and hate thy blooming years. 

With words of shame 5 

And taunts of scorn they join thy name. 

For on thy cheeks the glow is spread 
That tmts thy morning hills with red ; 
Thy step — the wild-deer's rustling feet 
Within thy woods are not more fleet : 10 

Thy hopeful eye 
Is bright as thine own sunny sky. 

Ay, let them rail — those haughty ones, 
While safe thou dweUest with thy sons. 
They do not know how loved thou art, 15 

How many a fond and fearless heart 

Would rise to throw 
Its life between thee and the foe. 

They know not, in their hate and pride, 
What virtues with thy children bide ; 20 

How true, how good, thy graceful maids 
Make bright, like flowers, the vaUey-shades ; 

What generous men 
Spring like thine oaks, by hill and glen ; — 



ILLINOIS COURSE — EIGHTH YEAR 183 

What cordial welcomes greet the guest 25 

By thy lone rivers of the West ; 
How faith is kept, and truth revered, 
And man is loved, and God is feared, 

In woodland homes. 
And where the ocean border foams. 30 

There 's freedom at thy gates and rest 
For Earth's down-trodden and oppressed, 
A shelter for the hunted head, 
For the starved laborer toil and bread. 

Power at thy bounds, 35 

Stops and calls back his baffled hounds. 

O fair young mother ! on thy brow 

Shall sit a nobler grace than now. 

Deep in the brightness of the skies 

The thronging years in glory rise, 40 

And, as they fleet. 
Drop strength and riches at thy feet. 

Thine eye, with every coming hour. 
Shall brighten, and thy form shall tower ; 
And when thy sisters, elder born, 45 

Would brand thy name with words of scorn. 

Before thine eye. 
Upon their lips the taunt shall die. 



184 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

THE OAK 

James Russell Lowell 

What gnarled stretch, what depth of shade, is his ! 

There needs no crown to mark the forest's king ; 
How in his leaves outshines full summer's bliss ! 

Sun, storm, rain, dew, to him their tribute bring, 
Which he with such benignant royalty 5 

Accepts, as overpayeth what is lent ; 
All nature seems his vassal proud to be, 

And cunning only for his ornament. 

How towers he, too, amid the billowed snows. 

An unquelled exile from the summer's throne, 10 
Whose plain, uncinctured front more kingly shows, 

Now that the obscuring courtier leaves are flown. 
His boughs make music of the winter air, 

Jewelled with sleet, like some cathedral front 
Where clinging snow-flakes with quaint art repair 15 

The dints and furrows of time's envious brunt. 

How doth his patient strength the rude March wind 

Persuade to seem glad breaths of summer breeze. 
And win the soil that fain would be unkind. 

To swell his revenues with proud increase ! 20 

He is the gem ; and all the landscape wide 

(So doth his grandeur isolate the sense) 
Seems but the setting, worthless all beside. 

An empty socket, were he fallen thence. 

So, from oft converse with life's wintry gales, 25 

Should man learn how to clasp with tougher roots 



ILLINOIS COURSE — EIGHTH YEAR 185 

The inspiring earth ; how otherwise avails 
The leaf -creating sap that sunward shoots ? 

So every year that falls with noiseless flake 

Should fill old scars up on the stormward side, 30 

And make hoar age revered for age's sake, 
Not for traditions of youth's leafy pride. 

So, from the pinched soil of a churlish fate, 

True hearts compel the sap of sturdier growth, 
So between earth and heaven stand simply great, 35 

That these shall seem hut their attendants both ; 
For nature's forces with obedient zeal 

Wait on the rooted faith and oaken will ; 
As quickly the pretender's cheat they feel. 

And turn mad Pucks to flout and mock him still. 

Lord ! all Thy works are lessons ; each contains 41 

Some emblem of man's all-containing soul ; 
Shall he make fruitless all Thy glorious pains. 

Delving within Thy grace an eyeless mole ? 
Make me the least of thy Dodona-grove, 45 

Cause me some message of thy truth to bring, 
Speak but a word through me, nor let thy love 

Among my boughs disdain to perch and sing. 

40. See Shakespeare's A Midsummer Nighfs Dream. 
45. A grove of oaks at Dodona, in ancient Greece, was the seat 
of a famous oracle. 



186 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

THE RETURN OF THE BIRDS 

William Cullen Bryant 

I BLEAR, from many a little throat, 

A warble interrupted long ; 
I hear the robin's flute-like note, 

The bluebird's slenderer song. 

Brown meadows and the russet hill, 5 

Not yet the haunt of grazing herds. 

And thickets by the glimmering rill, 
Are all alive with birds. 

O choir of spring, why come so soon ? 

On leafless gi'ove and herbless lawn 10 

Warm lie the yellow beams of moon ; 

Yet winter is not gone. 

For frost shall sheet the pools again ; 

Again the blustering East shall blow — 
Whirl a white tempest through the glen, 15 

And load the pines with snow. 

Yet, haply, from the region where, 

Waked by an earlier spring than here. 

The blossomed wild-plum scents the air. 

Ye come in haste and fear. 20 

For there is heard the bugle-blast, 
The booming gun, the jarring drum. 

And on their chargers, spurring fast, 
Armed warriors go and come. 



ILLINOIS COURSE — EIGHTH YEAR 187 

There mighty hosts have pitched the camp 25 
In valleys that were yours till then, 

And Earth has shuddered to the tramp 
Of half a million men ! 

In groves where once ye used to sing, 

In orchards where ye had your birth, 30 

A thousand glittering axes swing 
To smite the trees to earth. 

Ye love the fields by ploughmen trod ; 

But there, when sprouts the beechen spray, 
The soldier only breaks the sod 35 

To hide the slain away. 

Stay, then, beneath our ruder sky ; 

Heed not the storm-clouds rising black, 
Nor yelling winds that with them fly ; 

Nor let them fright you back, — 40 

Back to the stifling battle-cloud, 

To burning towns that blot the day, 

And trains of mounting dust that shroud 
The armies on their way. 

Stay, for a tint of green shall creep 45 

Soon o'er the orchard's grassy floor, 

And from its bed the crocus peep. 
Beside the housewife's door. 

Here build, and dread no harsher sound. 

To scare you from the sheltering tree, 50 

Than winds that stir the branches round. 
And murmur of the bee. 



188 POEMS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

And we will pray that, ere again 

The flowers of autumn bloom and die, 

Our generals and their strong-armed men 55 
May lay their weapons by. 

Then may ye warble, unafraid, 

Where hands, that wear the fetter now, 

Free as your wings shall ply the spade. 

And guide the peaceful plough. 60 

Then, as our conquering hosts return, 
What shouts of jubilee shall break 

From placid vale and mountain stern. 
And shore of mighty lake ! 

And midland plain and ocean-strand 65 

Shall thunder : " Glory to the brave, 

Peace to the torn and bleeding land, 
And freedom to the slave ! " 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

A VISITOR to Cambridge, in Massachusetts, is very sure 
to make his first question, Where did Mr. Longfellow live ? 
and any one whom he meets will be able to give the answer. 
The ample, dignified mansion, built in Colonial days, and 
famous as the headquarters of Washington during the first 
year of the War for Independence, is in the midst of broad 
fields, and looks across meadows to the winding Charles 
and the gentle hills beyond. Great elms, fragrant lilacs 
and syringas, stand by the path which leads to the door ; and 
when the poet was living, the passer-by would often catch a 
glimpse of him as he paced up and down the shaded veranda 
which is screened by the shrubbery. 

Here came, in the summer of 1837, a slight, studious- 
looking young man, who lifted the heavy brass knocker, 
which hung then as it does now upon the front door, and 
very likely thought of the great general as he let it fall with 
a clang. He had called to see the owner of the house, Mrs. 
Andrew Craigie, widow of the apothecary -general of the 
Continental Army in the Revolution. The visitor asked if 
there was a room in her house which he could occupy. The 
stately old lady, looking all the more dignified for the turban 
which was wound about her head, answered, as she looked 
at the youthful figure : — 

" I no longer lodge students." 

" But I am not a student ; I am a professor in the Uni- 
versity." 

"A professor?" She looked curiously at one so like 
most students in appearance. 

"I am Professor Longfellow," he said. 

" Ah ! that is different. I will show you what there is." 



190 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 

She led him up the broad staircase, and, proud of her house, 
opened one spacious room after another, only to close the 
door of each, saying, " You cannot have that," until at length 
she led him into the southeast corner-room of the second 
story. " This was General Washington's chamber," she said. 
" You may have this ; " and here he gladly set up his home. 
The house was a large one, and already Edward Everett 
and Jared Sparks had lived here. Mr. Sparks was engaged, 
singularly enough, upon the Life and Writings of Wash- 
ington in the very house which Washington had occupied. 
Afterwards, when Mr. Longfellow was keeping house here, 
Mr. Joseph E. Worcester, the maker of the dictionary, 
shared it with him, for there was room for each family to 
keep a separate establishment, and even a third could have 
found independent quarters. When Mrs. Craigie died Mr. 
Longfellow bought the house, and there was his home until 
he died. 

When he came to Cambridge to be Professor of Modern 
Languages and Literature in Harvard College, he was thirty 
years old. He was but eighteen when he graduated at 
Bowdoin College, in the class in which Nathaniel Hawthorne 
also belonged, and he had given such promise that he was 
almost immediately called to be professor at Bowdoin. He 
accepted the appointment on condition that he might have 
three years of travel and study in Europe. The immediate 
result of his life abroad was in some translations, chiefly 
from the Spanish, in some critical papers, and in Outre Mer 
[Over Seas], his first prose work. He continued at Bow- 
doin until 1835, when he was invited to Harvard. Again 
he went to Europe for further study and travel, and after 
his return spent seventeen years in his professorship. 

Two years after he had begun to teach in Harvard Col- 
lege he published Hyperion^ a Romance. Hyperion, in 
classic mythology, is the child of heaven and earth, and 
in this romance the story is told of a young man who had 
earthly sorrows and fortunes, but heavenly desires and 
hopes. It contains many delightful legends and fancies 




5 A <XA/x^^V^ C . 2^<>-»'^-C^sJjU9-*0 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 191 

which travel and student life in Europe had brought to the 
poet's knowledge, and which he had carried back to his 
countrymen in America. Once afterward, in 1849, he pub- 
lished a romance of New England, Kavanagh ; but in the 
same year that saw Hyperion there appeared a thin vol- 
ume of poems entitled Voices of the Night ; and after that 
Mr. Longfellow continued to publish volumes of poetry, 
sometimes a book being devoted to a single poem, as Evan- 
geline or The Courtship of Miles Standish or Hiawatha, 
more often containing a collection of shorter poems, and 
sometimes, as in the Tales of a Wayside Inn, a number of 
poems pleasantly woven into a story in verse. 

The house in which Mr. Longfellow lived was full of 
suggestion of his work, and it remains much as he left it. 
" The study," as some one wrote of it during the poet's 
lifetime, " is a busy literary man's workshop : the table is 
piled with pamphlets and papers in orderly confusion ; a 
high desk in one corner suggests a practice of standing 
while writing, and gives a hint of one secret of the poet's 
singularly erect form at an age when the body generally 
begins to stoop and the shoulders to grow round ; an orange- 
tree stands in one window ; near it a stuffed stork keeps 
watch ; on the table is Coleridge's ink-stand ; upon the walls 
are crayon likenesses of Emerson, Hawthorne, and Sumner." 
Here, too, is the chair made from the wood of the spread- 
ing chestnut-tree under which the village smithy stood, and 
given to the poet by the children of Cambridge ; here is 
the pen presented by " beautiful Helen of Maine," the old 
Danish song-book and the antique pitcher ; upon the stair- 
case is the old clock, which 

" Points and beckons with its hands ; " 
one looks out from the chamber windows across the meadows 
upon the gentle Charles, — 

" Friends I love have dwelt beside thee, 
And have made thy margin dear ; " 
following the river one sees the trees and chimneys of Elm- 
wood, and perhaps a flight of 



192 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 

" herons winging- their way 
O'er the poet's house in the Elmwood thickets ; " 

while farther still one catches sight of the white tower of 
Mount Auburn and thinks of the graves there to which so 
many of the poet's friends were borne, and to which he 
himself was at last carried. It would be a pleasant task to 
read closely in Mr. Longfellow's poems and discover all the 
kind words which he has written of his friends. A man is 
known by the company he keeps. How fine must have been 
that nature which gathered into immortal verse the friend- 
ship of Agassiz, Hawthorne, Lowell, Sumner, Whittier, 
Tennyson, Irving ; and chose for companionship among the 
dead such names as Chaucer, Dante, Keats, Milton, Shake- 
speare. All these names, and more, will be found strung 
as beads upon the golden thread of Longfellow's verse. 

After all, the old house where the poet lived was most 
closely connected with his poems, because it was a home. 
Here his children grew, and out of its chambers issued those 
undying poems which sing the deep life of the fireside. In 
The Golden Mile- Stone he sings : — 

" Each man's chimney is his Golden Mile-Stone ; 
Is the central point, from which he measures 

Every distance 
Through the gateways of the world around him ; " 

and the secret of Mr. Longfellow's power is in the perfect 
art with which he brought all the treasures of the old world 
stories, and all the hopes of the new, to this central point ; 
his own fireside fed the flames of poetic genius, and kept 
them burning steadily and purely. 

Mr. Longfellow was born in Portland, Maine, February 
27, 1807. He had two sons and three daughters, and these 
three are celebrated in The Children's Hour. The poet 
always welcomed children to his house, and he was made 
very happy by their thought of him. His seventy-fifth birth- 
day was celebrated by school-children all over the country. 
A few days after, he was taken ill, and died March 24, 
1882. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 193 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

The poet Whittier was born on his father's farm, near 
Haverhill, Mass., December 17, 1807, and lived the life 
of a farmer's boy until he was eighteen years old. In his 
poem of Snow-Bound one will get the best knowledge of 
Whittier's boyhood : how he worked in barn and field ; 
listened to the stories which his elders told around the 
blazing hearth ; caught knowledge from the district school 
and from the lively schoolmaster who boarded at his father's 
house ; saw a newspaper once a week, and read in it of 
struggles for freedom in Greece and adventures in Central 
America ; read over and over again the small stock of books 
in the farmhouse, the almanac with its pithy sayings and 
anecdotes, and the lives of Quakers, for the Whittiers were of 
the Quaker faith. The best that he got was in the beauty 
of his mother's life, the strong, wise character of his father, 
the affection of his sisters, and all the sweet, noble influences 
of an industrious, God-fearing home. 

The family lived respectably and in tolerable comfort, but 
the farm was burdened with debt, and frugality and persist- 
ent industry were indispensable. The children, as well as 
their elders, had to work in doors and out. The young boy 
had only ten or twelve weeks of school in a year. He longed 
for learning, but the means of procuring it were lacking. 
Happily, the man who worked for his father on the farm in 
summer eked out his income by making women's shoes in the 
winter, and the boy learned enough of him to earn a small 
sum, sufficient to pay the expense of a summer term at an 
academy. At the close of the term he tried another way of 
earning money, and taught a small school in a neighboring 
town. The next year he worked on the farm, and in the 
spring of 1830 went to Hartford, Conn., and edited The New 
England Review for two years, when he was called home 
by the illness of his father, whose death, soon after, made it 
necessary for him to take the charge of the farm for several 



194 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 

years. In 1833 he published a pamphlet entitled Justice 
a7id Expediency, on the slavery question, and the same year 
he was a member of the convention which formed the Ameri- 
can Anti-Slavery Society. He was a member of the Massa- 
chusetts Legislature in 1835. In 1838 he became editor 
of the Pennsylvcmia Freeman, at Pliiladelphia, where his 
office was sacked and burned by a mob. His health failing, 
at the end of two years he returned to Massachusetts, and 
took up his residence with his mother and sister at Ames- 
bury. In 1845 he became associate editor of the National 
Era at Washington, D. C., in which paper Uncle Tom's 
Cabiii was published. 

He commenced writing in his sixteenth year. His early 
verses indicated his scanty opportunities for reading and 
study. Some of them were printed in the local papers, and 
later some found a place in magazines. The first collection 
of them was made in 1847. Ten years later a more com- 
plete edition was published. He was a frequent contributor 
to The Atlantic Monthly magazine from its establishment. 
During the last part of his life he spent much of his time at 
Oak Knoll, Danvers, though still retaining his residence in 
Amesbury, eight miles from the old homestead, the scene of 
Snow-Bound. His health was never robust, and in his later 
years he wrote nothing without suffering. 

Mr. Whittier was a member of the religious Society of 
Friends, and a regular attendant of its meetings ; but he 
was broad in his sympathies, and kindly disposed towards 
all who, in different ways from his own, sought to serve God 
and benefit their fellow men. He took an active interest in 
all questions involving the honor and welfare of his country. 
He aided in forming one of the first temperance organiza- 
tions in the State of Massachusetts. The relations of Labor 
and Capital, Public Charities, Woman Suffrage, Peace, and 
Religious Toleration received his earnest attention. He re- 
garded it a matter of duty to take an active part in elections ; 
but although he was twice a member of the Electoral College, 
as a rule he declined overtures for acceptance of public office. 




UJJ^u^y^^ 



'JU^ 




BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 195 

His prose writings consist of Leaves from Margaret 
Smitlis Journal, Old Porty^aits and Modern Sketches, 
Recreations arid Miscellanies, and various contributions to 
the anti-slavery discussions. His love for and interest in 
children have been manifested in his very popular books, 
Child Life and Child Life in Prose. He edited with care- 
ful introductory essays the Journal of John Woolman, The 
Patience of Hope by Dora Greenwell, and Songs of Three 
Centuries. 

Mr. Whittier never married, and never travelled beyond 
his own country. He preferred a quiet, rural life. He 
loved the sea, the beaches and islands of the New England 
coast, and in summer was in the habit of visiting the moun- 
tains of New Hampshire, especially the Sandwich range, 
terminating in the sharp peak of Chocorua. One of these 
hills has been named Mt. Whittier by the people who live 
near it ; and just as the beaches and country roads of Essex 
County have been touched with the light from Whittier's 
poems, so he wove into his verse the mountain glory and 
the ripple of the brook. 

It was Whittier's delight to " plight the troth," or marry 
fact and fancy, and his poetry is full of the poetic side of 
every-day matters. He honored noble living wherever he 
saw it, but most of all he delighted to honor those heroes 
whom the world has made little of, men and women of 
humble life but generous self-sacrifice, who have toiled and 
suffered for others, and borne shame for righteousness' 
sake. He found subjects for his verse the world over, but 
he liked best to find them in obscure corners where other 
people had passed them by. 

In his eighty-first year, he prepared for publication a 
definitive edition of his writings, which was published in 
seven volumes, four of poetry and three of prose. He fur- 
nished a number of interesting head-notes to his poems, and 
made a careful revision of the text. His death occurred at 
Hampton Falls, N. H., September 7, 1892, when he was 
nearly eighty-five years old. 



196 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

It has often been said that the real test of the greatness 
of a country is the men it produces. One purpose of this 
book is to give to the young people of Illinois a sense of 
acquaintanceship with some of the best men that America 
has produced. One of them, Ralph Waldo Emerson, wrote 
of another, after reading some of his best poems : " We will 
not again disparage America now we have seen 
Sye of ^ what men it will bear. What a certificate of good 
toT.^u ^' elements in the soil, climate, and institutions is 
P* ^' Lowell, whose admirable verses I have just read." 

James Russell Lowell was a man of wide interest and 
deep feeling ; and so he got much out of life, he lived richly. 
Some of the poems that you have studied, The Dandelion, 
The Oak, The Vision of Sir Launfal, and Rhcecus, show 
his sense of fellowship with nature. To one of his friends he 
wrote, " How I do love the earth ! I feel it thrill under my 
feet, I feel somehow as if it were conscious of my love, as if 
something passed into my dancing blood from it." In his 
poem. Under the Willows, he says. — 

" But I in June am midway to believe 
A tree among my far progenitors, 
Such sympathy is mine with all the race, 
Such mutual recognition vaguely sweet 
There is between us. Surely there are times 
When they consent to own me of their kin, 
And condescend to me, and call me cousin." 

And again in one of the Biglow Papers he writes, — 

" Why, th' ain't a bird upon the tree 
But half forgives my bein' human." 

He gained not only joy but tranquillity and wisdom from 
a life close to nature. Like the shepherd of King Admetus, 
of whom he tells us, — 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 197 

" It seemed the loveliness of things 
Did teach him all their use, 
For, in mere weeds, and stones, and springs, 
He found a healing' power profuse." 

He loved men as well as nature. To a fellow poet he 
wrote, " Think of me after I am gone (for in the nature of 
things you will survive me) as one who had scudder's 
a really friendly feeling for everything human." fS?fvoi/^ 
The Vision of Sir Launfal tells us of his belief "' p- ^2^- 
in the brotherhood of men ; and Yussouf, of his faith in the 
possibilities of nobleness even in the outcast. 

So true a democrat as these poems show him to be could 
not but enter with ardor into the anti-slavery movement. 
He was opposed to the Mexican War, not only because he 
shrank from the thought of war in general, but because 
he felt that the chief purpose in this one was to add to the 
slave-holding territory of the United States. In 1846 he 
began the first series of Biglow Papers. It included a 
number of satirical poems written in the Yankee dialect. 
Their keenness of wit, together with the feeling of indigna- 
tion and scorn that they disclosed, made them most effective. 
The best known are the one beginning 

" Thrash away, you '11 hev to rattle 
On them kettle-drums o' yourn " 

and the one with the refrain 

*' But John P. 
Robinson he." 

Read them when you study the Mexican War. 

During the Civil War he wrote a second series of Biglow 
Papers. In these we see how his hatred of war gave way 
before his love for the Union, which stood to him for the 
principle of democracy. Three of his nephews were killed 
in the war. For a touching picture of his grief at their loss, 
a grief mingled with pride in their heroism, and of his long- 
ing for such a close of the war as should bring 

" Fair wages for brave men, 
A nation saved, a race delivered ! " 



198 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 

read the poem in this series beginning, 

•' Dear Sir, — Your letter come to ban' 
Requestin' me to please be funny." 

This poem is marred only by Lowell's failure to recognize 
at this time the honesty of the Southern leaders. 

Lowell, while at first chafing under the apparent inde- 
cision of Lincoln, came soon to recognize the real wisdom of 
the president's leadership. You have read the poet's noble 
tribute to the martyr in the Ode Recited at the Harvard 
Com')?ie7}ioration (sixth stanza) . Read the last stanza of the 
ode, that you may have some sense of Lowell's devotion to 
his country. 

Lowell loved nature, loved men, and loved his country ; 
moreover, he had the power to inspire like feelings in others. 
It is natural that every American boy and girl should wish 
to know something of the life of such a countryman. 

James Russell Lowell was born in Cambridge, Mass., 
February 22, 1819, and died there August 12, 1891. 
The house in which he was born and died, Elmwood, was 
about a mile from Harvard College, the oldest college 
in the United States. It was one of a group of houses 
built before the War for Independence by Boston merchants 
and crown officers, who in the war took the side of Eng- 
land. The houses were built on a broad road known as 
Tory Row, and each had a considerable estate attached to 
it. Elmwood was finally bought by Charles Lowell, min- 
ister of one of the Boston churches, and father of the poet. 
Another of the houses, Craigie House, became later the 
home of Longfellow ; so the two poets were neighbors. 
Lowell's poems and prose essays contain hundreds of refer- 
ences to the trees, the birds, the brook, the fields, the river 
Charles, and the people that were a part of his Elmwood 
life. Not long before his death he described the house to 
an English friend as follows : " 'T is a pleasant old house, 
just about twice as old as I am, four miles from Bosto«, in 
what was once the country and is now a populous suburb. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 199 

But it still has some ten acres of open about it, and some 
fine old trees. When the worst comes to the worst (if I 
live so long), I shall still have four and a half acres left 
with the house, the rest belonging to my brothers and sisters 
or their heirs. It is a square house, with four rooms on a 
floor, like some houses of the Georgian era I have seen in 
English provincial towns, only they are of brick and this 
is of wood. But it is solid, with heavy oaken beams, the 
spaces between which in the four outer walls are filled in 
with brick, though you must n't fancy a brick-and-timber 
house, for outwardly it is sheathed with wood. Inside there 
is much wainscot (of deal) painted white in the fashion of 
the time when it was built. It is very sunny, the sun rising 
so as to shine (at an acute angle, to be sure) through the 
northern windows, and going round the other three sides in 
the course of the day. There is a pretty staircase with the 
quaint old twisted banisters, — which they call balusters 
now ; but mine are banisters. My library occupies two 
rooms opening into each other by arches at the sides of the 
ample chimneys. The trees I look out on are the earliest 
things I remember. There you have me in my new-old 
quarters. But you must not fancy a large house — rooms 
sixteen feet square, and on the ground floor, nine high. It 
was large as things went here, when it was built, and has a 
certain air of amplitude about it as from some inward sense 
of dignity." 

Lowell entered Harvard College at fifteen years of age. 
Here he gave indifferent attention to many of the tasks set 
him, but spent much time in reading the best books. In 
1838 he graduated. For a time he studied law, but his 
decided literary bent drew him away from that profession. 
In 1841, a small volume of his poems was published. 
Three years later he was married to Maria White, a young 
woman of refinement and delicacy of feeling and of deep 
moral convictions. Her devotion to anti-slavery principles 
was not without its influence upon her husband. 

In the next few years he wrote many articles for anti- 



200 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 

slavery papers and the first series of the Biglow Papers. 
But he was a student and writer of literature for its own 
sake as well as a reformer ; and in these years some of his 
finest poems were written, among them The Vision of Sir 
Launfal. He sometimes felt that his ardor for reform was 
a hindrance in his career as a man of letters. About this 
time he wrote his Fable for Critics^ in which he dashed off 
his impressions of the chief literary people of America, 
among them Longfellow, Whittier, and Bryant. Of him- 
self he wrote : — 

" There is Lowell, who 's striving Parnassus to climb 
With a whole bale of isms tied together with rhyme, 
He might get on alone, spite of brambles and boulders. 
But he can't with that bundle he has on his shoulders, 
The top of the hill he will ne'er come nigh reaching 
Till he learns the distinction 'twixt singing and preaching." 

In 1851 and 1852 he visited Europe with his family. 
He spent much of his time there in the study of the Italian 
language and literature. 

Of the four children of Mr. and Mrs. Lowell three died 
very young, the only son being buried in Rome. The oldest 
child was a daughter, Blanche. The touching poem, The 
First Snow-Fall, shows how deeply her father felt her 
death. Mrs. Lowell had always been frail, and in 1853 
she too died, leaving one little daughter, Mabel. The night 
that Mrs. Lowell died at Elmwood, a child was born to the 
Longfellows in Craigie House. Longfellow's poem. The 
Two Angels, commemorates the two events. 

For many years Longfellow had been Smith Professor of 
the French and Spanish Languages and Professor of Belles 
Lettres in Harvard College. In 1855 he resigned, and 
Lowell was chosen to take the place. He spent two years 
in Europe in preparation for the work, and in 1857 took 
up his duties in Harvard College. In this year, too, he 
married Miss Frances Dunlap, who had had charge of the 
little Mabel since her mother's death. 

During the twenty years of his active professorship he 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 201 

wrote much. For some time he was editor of the Atlantic 
Monthly, and for ten years he was connected with the 
North American Bevieiu. Most of what he wrote appeared 
first in these magazines. He wrote many prose essays upon 
literature, history, and politics, and some more personal 
ones, such as Cambridge Twenty Years Ago and My Garden 
Acquaintance. The second series of Biglow Papers was 
written during the Civil War, and after its close Lowell 
wrote some of his noblest poems, among them the Com^ 
memoration Ode. 

President Hayes in 1877 named Lowell to represent the 
United States in Spain. He served here for two years and 
was then transferred to England, where he remained for six 
years. Here he was very popular. Englishmen admired 
his generous culture, the ease and brilliancy with which he 
spoke on public and semi-public occasions, and his tact in 
the conduct of business. They admired, too, his loyalty to 
America and her institutions. As American minister, poet, 
and friend of Longfellow, he spoke at the unveiling of a 
bust of Longfellow in Westminster Abbey. During the 
years of his foreign residence he received honors from Span- 
ish, English, and Scottish universities, as well as the highest 
honors that Harvard College could bestow. 

After the close of his foreign service, he divided his time 
for several years between the homes of his sister and daugh- 
ter in Massachusetts and the haunts that had become dear 
to him in England. Upon his final return from England in 
1889, he went to Elmwood, where his daughter was again 
living. Here he revised and rearranged his writings, and 
here in 1891 he died. 



WILLIAM CULLEN BKYANT 

It is a little significant that Bryant's first published poem, 
The Embargo, 1809, should have been in effect a political 
pamphlet. The union of politics and poetry was in the 



202 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 

man, and that it should have appeared in literature may 
readily be explained by the fact that the writer was only 
thirteen years old at the time, having been born at Cum- 
mington, Mass., November 3, 1794. The two strands 
were twisted into the cord of his destiny ; but though 
Bryant's patriotism flamed forth more than once in his 
verse, notably in Our Country's Call, he never after his 
first trial made his poetry a mere veliicle for political 
doctrines. 

Bryant's father was a cultivated country doctor, who 
looked carefully after his son's reading and sent him to 
begin a college education at Williams. He spent a little 
less than a year at college, but his father's limited income 
forbade further collegiate study, and he was forced to take 
up the study of the law, which he had chosen for his pro- 
fession, and was admitted to the bar in 1815. 

In boyhood, during his studies, and after he had been 
admitted to practice, he was constantly allured by poetry, 
and some of his most famous poems, including Thanatopsis 
and To a Waterfowl, were published at this period. In 
1821 he was invited to read a poem before the Phi Beta 
Kappa Society of Harvard College, and he read The Ages, 
a stately poem which bore witness to his lofty philosophic 
nature. Shortly after this he issued a small volume of 
poems, scarcely more than a pamphlet, and containing but 
eight pieces ; yet every one is now a classic, and the little 
paper book stands chronologically at the head of American 
poetical literature. 

When these poems appeared Bryant was married and 
living at Great Barrington, Mass., as a young lawyer ; 
but he had a growing distaste for the profession, with a 
steadily increasing absorption in literary pursuits, as well as 
strong interest in public affairs. He spent much of his time 
in periodical work, and in 1825 finally went to New York 
to live, and undertook the management of a monthly jour- 
nal, the New York Review. He earned a precarious liveli- 
hood by this and miscellaneous work, but the Beview went 




^^^^^^^»«/ z^S^^^^^^^^tWrr; 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 203 

the way of similar ventures, and in 1826 he made a connec- 
tion which in one form or other he retained the rest of his 
life. He became, in that year, a member of the staff of 
the New York Evening Post, and in 1829 was chief editor 
and part proprietor. There can be little doubt, however, 
that the absorbing occupation of daily journalism reduced 
the sum of his contributions to pure literature. Much that 
he did in prose after this time was in the way of relaxation, 
as in the letters of travel written during his several journeys 
and collected as Letters from a Traveller, Letters from the 
East, and Letters from Spain and other Countries. 

His poetic work was infrequent. In 1842 he published 
The Fountain and other Poems, and collections of later 
poems were issued in 1844 and 1863. One expression of 
his poetic nature was in his strong love of the country and 
country life. He resorted frequently to the old homestead 
at Cummin gton, which came into his possession, but he 
created special associations with Roslyn on Long Island, an 
estate which he bought in 1843 and always retained. It 
was there in 1865 that his wife died, and in his loneliness 
Mr. Bryant began the translation of the Iliad of Homer as 
an occupation for his troubled mind. He finished this task 
in 1870, and followed it with a translation of the Odyssey. 

He was frequently called upon to make addresses in con- 
nection with literary anniversaries. A volume of Orations 
and Addresses contains much of his work of this kind ; 
and his last appearance in public was on the occasion of 
the unveiling of a bust of Mazzini in Central Park. He 
delivered an oration, but the exposure brought on an illness 
from which he died a few days after, June 12, 1878. His 
son-in-law, Parke Godwin, has written his life and edited 
his writings. 



INDEX OF AUTHORS 

Bible, The 

The Hundredth Psahii, 71. 

Brooks, Phillips 

Christmas Everywhere, 103. 

Bryant, William Cullen 

Biographical Sketch, 201 ; Abraham Lincoln, 79 ; " O 
Mother of a Mighty Race," 182 ; The Planting of the 
Apple-Tree, 19 ; The Return of the Birds, 186 ; Robert 
of Lincoln, 1 ; Song of Marion's Men, 115 ; To a Water- 
fowl, 124. 

Burton, Richard 
Christmas Tide, 103. 

Cary, Alice 

The Gray Swan, 88 ; An Order for a Picture, 62 ; No- 
bility, 12. 

Cary, Phcebe 

The Leak in the Dike, 96 ; A Legend of the Northland, 
120 ; Little Gottlieb, 73 ; Our Heroes, 53. 

Emerson, Ralph Waldo 

Concord Hymn, 113 ; The Mountain and the Squirrel, 
39. 

Field, Eugene 

Nightfall in Dordrecht, 3. 

Hemans, Felicia D. 

The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers in New England, 
69 ; The Voice of Spring, 117. 

Holmes, Oliver Wendell 

The Chambered Nautilus, 174 ; The Flower of Liberty, 
114 ; Sun and Shadow, 54. 



206 INDEX OF AUTHORS 

Jackson, Helen Hunt 

Down to Sleep, 9 ; October's Bright Blue Weather, 34 ; 
September, 30. 

Larcom, Lucy 
Plant a Tree, 82. 

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth 

Biographical Sketch, 189 ; The Arrow and the Song, 80 ; 
The Builders, 80 ; Children, 153 ; The Children's Hour, 
14 ; Christmas Bells, 71 ; The Emperor's Bird's-Nest, 50 ; 
The Harvest Moon, 93 ; The Herons of Elmwood, 157 ; 
Hiawatha's Childhood (Selection), 16 ; Hiawatha's Sail- 
ing (Selection), 22 ; The Leap of Roushan Beg, 31 ; The 
Legend Beautiful, 176 ; The Legend of the Crossbill, 
123 ; The Old Clock on the Stairs, 154 ; Paul Revere's 
Ride, 42 ; Rain in Summer, 90 ; Spring, 83 ; To the 
River Charles, 160 ; The Two Angels, 158 ; The Village 
Blacksmith, 37. 

Lowell, James Russell 

Biographical Sketch, 196 ; The Fountain, 66 ; The Heri- 
tage, 77; June (from The Vision of Sir Launfal), 85; 
The Oak, 184 ; Ode Recited at the Harvard Commemo- 
ration, 138 ; Rhoecus, 162 ; The Shepherd of King Ad- 
metus, 131 ; To the Dandelion, 167 ; Yussouf, 130. 

Read, Thomas Buchanan 
Sheridan's Ride, 67. 

Rexford, Eben Eugene 
The Bluebird, 57. 

Sangster, Margaret 
Our Flag, 14. 

Selected 

A Thanksgiving Song, 8. 

Tennyson, Alfred, Lord 

The Brook, 26 ; Christmas (from In Memoriam), 104 ; 
Song — The Owl, 58. 

Thaxter, Celia 

Maize, the Nation's Emblem, 94 ; Piccola, 11 ; The 
Sandpiper, 55 ; The Sparrows, 40 ; Spring, 28. 



INDEX OF AUTHORS 207 

Van Dyke, Henry 

The Ruby-Crowned Kinglet, 126. 

Ward, Lydia A. Coonley 

Why do Bells for Christmas Ring ? 10. 

Whittier, John Greenleaf 

Biographical Sketch, 193 ; Abraham Davenport, 170 ; 
Barbara Frietchie, 59 ; Conductor Bradley, 111 ; The 
Corn-Song, 5 ; For an Autumn Festival, 172 ; The Frost 
Spirit, 101 ; The Gift of Tritemius, 136 ; The Huskers, 
133 ; Ichabod, 180 ; King Solomon and the Ants, 105 ; 
The Pumpkin, 35 ; Snow-Bound (Selections) : The Kitchen 
Scene, 48 ; The Mother, 107 ; The Schoolmaster, 109 ; 
The Sister, 108 ; The Storm, 47. 

Wordsworth, William 

The Daffodils, 84; The Kitten and Falling Leaves 
(Selection), 7 ; Written in March, 54. 



INDEX OF TITLES 



Abraham Davenport, 170. 
Abraham Lincoln, 79. 
Arrow and the Song, The, 
80. 

Barbara Frietchie, 59. 
Biographical Sketches, 

Bryant, 201. 

Longfellow, 189. 

Lowell, 196. 

Whittier, 193. 
Bluebird, The, 57. 
Brook, The, 26. 
Builders, The, 80. 

Chambered Nautilus, The, 174. 
Children, 153. 
Children's Hour, The, 14. 
Christmas, 104. 
Christmas Bells, 71. 
Christmas Everywhere, 103. 
Christmas Tide, 103. 
Concord Hymn, 113. 
Conductor Bradley, 111. 
Corn-Song, The, 5. 

Daffodils, The, 84. 
Down to Sleep, 9. 

Emperor's Bird's-Nest, The, 
50. 

Flower of Liberty, The, 114. 
For an Autumn Festival, 

172. 
Fountain, The, 66. 
Frost Spirit, The, 101. 

Gift of Tritemius, The, 136. 
Gray Swan, The, 88. 



Harvest Moon, The, 93. 

Heritage, The, 77. 

Herons of Elmwood, The, 157. 

Hiawatha's Childhood (Selec- 
tion), 16. 

Hiawatha's Sailing (Selection), 
22. 

Hundredth Psalm, The, 71. 

Huskers, The, 133. 

Ichabod, 180. 

June (from The Vision of Sir 
Launfal), 85. 

King Solomon and the Ants, 

105. 
Kitten and Falling Leaves, The 

(Selection), 7. 

Landing of the Pilgrim Fa- 
thers in New England, The, 
69. 

Leak in the Dike, The, 96. 

Leap of Roushan Beg, The, 
31. 

Legend Beautiful, The, 176. 

Legend of the Crossbill, The, 
123. 

Legend of the Northland, A, 
120. 

Little Gottlieb, 73. 

Maize, the Nation's Emblem, 

94. 
Mountain and the Squirrel, 

The, 39. 

Nightfall in Dordrecht, 3. 
Nobility, 12. 



210 



INDEX OF TITLES 



" O Mother of a Mighty Race," 

182. 
Oak, The, 184. 
October's Bright Blue Weather, 

34. 
Ode Recited at the Harvard 

Commemoration, 138. 
Old Clock on the Stairs, The, 

154. 
Order for a Picture, An, 62. 
Our Flag, 14. 
Our Heroes, 53. 

Paul Revere's Ride, 42. 

Piccola, 11. 

Plant a Tree, 82. 

Planting of the Apple-Tree, 

The, 19. 
Pumpkin, The, 35. 

Rain in Summer, 90. 
Return of the Birds, The, 186. 
RhcBcus, 162. 
Robert of Lincoln, 1. 
Ruby-Crowned Kinglet, The, 
126. 

Sandpiper, The, 55. 
September, 30. 



Shepherd of King Admetus, 
The, 131. 

Sheridan's Ride, 67. 

Sno w-Bound (Selections) — The 
Kitchen Scene, 48; The Mo- 
ther, 107 ; The Schoolmaster, 
109 ; The Sister, 108 ; The 
Storm, 47. 

Song — The Owl, 58. 

Song of Marion's Men, 115. 

Sparrows, The, 40. 

Spring, Longfellow, 83. 

Spring, Thaxter, 28. 

Sun and Shadow, 54. 

Thanksgiving Song, A, 8. 
To the Dandelion, 167. 
To the River Charles, 160. 
To a Waterfowl, 124. 
Two Angels, The, 158. 

Village Blacksmith, The, 37. 
Voice of Spring, The, 117. 

Why do Bells for Christmas 

Ring, 10. 
Written in March, 54. 

Yussouf, 130. 



PopuLAB School Rbadeks, containinq Good Litebatube draws 

PRINCIPALLY FROM THE RlVEBSIDE LITERATURE SERIES. 



american poemgs. 



selections from the works of 

LONGFELLOW, WKITTIER, BRYANT, HOLMES, LOWELL, 
AND EMERSON. 

Wmh. Biographical Sketches, and Notes explaining the Historical and 

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The list of pieces selected is as follows : — 

LONGFELLOW: Evangeline; The Courtship of Miles Standiah; 
The Building of the Ship. 

WHITTIER : Snow-Bound ; Among the Hills ; Mabel Martin ; Cob- 
bler Keezar's Vision ; Barclay of Ury ; The Two Rabbis ; The 
Gift of Tritemius; The Brother of Mercy; The Prophecy of 
Samuel Sewall ; Maud Muller. 

BRYANT : Sella ; The Little People of the Snow. 

HOLMES : Grandmother's Story of Bunker Hill Battle ; The School- 
Boy. 

LOWELL : The Vision of Sir Launf al ; Under the Willows ; Under 
the Old Elm ; Agassiz. 

EMERSON : The Adirondacks ; The Titmouse ; Monadnoo. 
Appendix : In the I^aboratory with Agassiz. 
All the poems are given in full, and foot-notes explain passages con- 
taining allusions which might not be understood by readers. 
Brief biographical sketches of the poets are also given. 



american pxo^z. 

SELECTIONS OF ENTIRE ESSATS, SKETCHES, AND STORIES, FROM THE 
WORKS OF 

HAWTHORNE, IRVING, LONGFELLOW, WHITTIER, 
HOLMES, LOWELL, THOREAU, EMERSON. 

With Introductions and Notes. Crown 8vo, 420 pages, $1.00, net. 

The selections comprised in this book are as follows : — 

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LONGFELLOW : The Valley of the Loire ; Journey into Spain. 
WHITTIER : Yankee Gypsies ; The Boy Captives. 
HOLMES : The Gambrel-Roofed House. 
LOWELL: My Garden Acquaintance; Abraham Lincoln; Books 

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EMERSON: Behavior; Books. 

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their great and varied interest, as weU as their unquestionable liter 
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iJiaiSterpieceis of american Literature, 

Crown 8vo, 470 pages, $1.00, net, postpaid. 
With a portrait of each author. 

CONTENTS. 

[rvinq : Biographical Sketch ; Rip Van Winkle. 
Bbyant ; Biographical Sketch; Thanatopsis; Togs 

Waterfowl. 
Franklin : Biographical Sketch ; Poor Richard's Al« 

manac ; Letter to Samuel Mather ; Letter to the 

Rev. Dr. Lathrop, Boston ; Letter to Benjamin 

Webb. 
Holmes ; Biographical Sketch ; Grandmother's Story 

of Bunker Hill Battle; The Ploughman; The 

Chambered Nautilus ; The I"'on Gate. 
Hawthorne : Biographical Sketch ; The Great Stone 

Face ; My Visit to Niagara. 
Whittier : Biographical Sketch ; Snow-Bound ; The 

Ship-Builders ; The Worship of Nature. 
Thoreau : Biographical Sketch ; Wild Apples. 
O'Reilly? Biographical Sketch; The Pilgrim Fa^ 

therse 
Lowell : Biographical Sketch ; Books and Libraries ; 

Essay on Lincoln [with Lincoln's Gettysburg 

Speech] ; The Vision of Sir Launfal. 
Emerson: Biographical Sketch; Behavior; Boston 

Hymn. 
Webster: Biographical Sketch; Address delivered 

at the Laying of the Corner-Stone of Bunker Hill 

Monument, June 17, 1825. 
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22. The Great Debate : Webster's Reply to Hayne.** 
Nos. 121, 122 are edited by Lindsay Swift. 

23. Lowell's Democracy, and Other Papers.** 

24. Aldrich's Baby Bell, The Little Violinist, etc. 

25. Dryden's Palamon and Arcite. Arthur Gilman.* 

26. Ruskin's King of the Golden River ; Wonder Stories, by Others.* 

27. Keats's Ode on a Grecian Urn, The Eve of St. Agnes, etc. 

28. Byron's Prisoner of Chillon, and Other Poems. 

29. Plato's The Judgment of Socrates : being The Apology, Crito, and 
the Closing Scene of Phaedo. Translated by Paul E. More. 

30. Emerson's The Superlative, and Other Essays. 

31. Emerson's Nature, and Compensation. Edited by Edward W. Embrson. 

32. Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum, etc. Louise Imogen Guiney.* 

33. Carl Schurz's Abraham Lincoln.** 

34. Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel. Rolfe. {Double Number, 30 cents. 
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13s, 136. Chaucer's Prologue, The Knight's Tale, and The Nun'8 Priest's 
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and The Nun's Priest's Tale. Frank J. Mather, Jr.** 

For explanation of signs see end of list. 



€l^e ifliberiesilie %itttatntt Mtit^- continued 

137. Homer's Iliad. Books I., VI., XXII., and XXIV. Translated by Bryant. 

138. Hawthorne's The Custom House, and Main Street. 
i3g. Howells's Doorstep Acquaintance, and Other Sketches. 

140. Thackeray's Henry Esmond. {Quintuple No.) Pa., 60 cts. ; linen, 75 cts. 

141. Three Outdoor Papers, by T. W. Higginson. 

142. Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies: i. Of Kings' Treasuries; 2. Of Queens' 

143. Plutarch's Life of Alexander the Great. North's Translation. 

144. Scudder's Book of Legends.* 

145. Hawthorne's Gentle Boy, and Other Tales. 

146. Longfellow's Giles Corey of the Salem Farms. 

147. Pope's Rape of the Lock, and Other Poems. Henry W. Bovnton. 

148. Hawthorne's Marble Faim. Annie Russell Marble.§§§ 

149. Shakespeares Twelfth Night. R. G. White and Helen Gray Cone.* 

150. Ouida's A Dog of Flanders, and The Niirnberg Stove.* 

151. Mrs. Ewing's Jackanapes, and The Brownies.* H. W. Boynton. 

152. Martineau's Peasant and Prince. § H. W. Boynton. 

153. Shakespeare's Midsimimer- Night's Dream. Laura E. Lockwood. 

154. Shakespeare's Tempest. R. G. White and E. E. Hale, Jr.* 

155. Irving's Life of Goldsmith. Willis Boughton.§§. 

156. Tennyson's Gareth and Lynette, Lancelot and Elaine, The Passing of 

Arthur.* 

157. The Song of Roland. Translated by Isabel Butler.§ 

15S. Merlin, and Sir Balin. Books I. and II. From Malory's King Arthur 
C. G. Child.* 

159. Beowulf. C. G. Child.* 

160. Spenser's Faerie Queene. Book I.§ 

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L The Riverside Song Book. 120 Classic American Poems set to Standard 
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y The Book of Nature Myths. {Special Number.) A Second Book in Reading, 
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Q Selections from the Writings of Eleven English Authors. 

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T Emerson's Nature ; Lowell's My Garden Acquaintance. N, Y. Regents' 
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U A Dramatization of Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha. By Florence Hol- 
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